


The Thrice-Tenth Kingdom

by dance_at_bougival



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, dub-con and non-con in later chapters, the red room prequel we all deserve
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:46:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1794268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dance_at_bougival/pseuds/dance_at_bougival
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>In the old world, there is an old story, about an old man who could not die. Who guarded his own death jealously and cunningly, who devised all manners of traps and ingenious hoaxes to hold off the day of death. Though he was old, and corrupt, and avaricious, we are taught that immortality is possible. You just have to want it more than you want to live.</p>
</blockquote>—or: Romanova to Romanoff, the girl without end.
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We all carry our deaths within us; the beggar girl on the streets and the rich merchant’s wife in her spacious boudoir, the starving writer in Vladimir Square—our death ticks in every cell of our being, and every second brings you closer to that final exit of breath. It could be a knock on the head, a mugging gone wrong, a hard winter without heat. It could be any number of things. If you are lucky, you will go to sleep, and simply fail to wake up.
> 
> If you are not, your country will extend a red, red hand, and say: “You. I want you.”

Before the children of the revolution marched through the snow and painted the cities red with their conviction, there was a story in the old world of a man who could not die.

He was a tsar, as all bad men are, rich with gold and stinking of corruption, who lived in a castle which was on a hill which was on a river which was on an island, cushioned on all four sides by the push and pull of the amethyst sea. This tsar has lived for a hundred thousand years, and will live for a hundred thousand more, and again, and again, and again. This tsar will never die.

We all carry our deaths within us; the beggar girl on the streets and the rich merchant’s wife in her spacious boudoir, the starving writer in Vladimir Square—our death ticks in every cell of our being, and every second brings you closer to that final exit of breath. It could be a knock on the head, a mugging gone wrong, a hard winter without heat. It could be any number of things. If you are lucky, you will go to sleep, and simply fail to wake up.

If you are not, your country will extend a red, red hand, and say: “You. I want you.”

 

They pick her up in Budapest.

There is an abandoned warehouse, a few miles outside city limits. The ground is criss-crossed with old cables, grime black on the concrete and mould growing on the corners. There is graffiti on the walls, red and black and green and long careless lines and caricatures of local politicians alongside solicitations for cheap phone sex and—

And she is bleeding from a bullet wound to the side.

It is a bare half inch from her spleen, a mere fraction of a centimetre from puncturing her lung. She is having trouble breathing. She is bleeding all over her hands, and she is going cold. She thinks that she has lost at least a litre of blood, and is nearing two. The edges of her vision are already going blurry when the SWAT team bursts into the warehouse, and she is suddenly the singular focus of twenty guns.

There is a cyanide tooth in her mouth. They had pulled out a real tooth to put it in, and hadn’t given her any anaesthetics. She had not screamed; she had opened her mouth obediently, and after they were done, she had closed it, because gaping was not comely in a young woman. There is a cyanide tooth in her mouth. There is a cyanide tooth in her mouth, and by rights she should have prodded it out with her tongue, and bit down a week ago when she missed the rendezvous. She should have bit down five days ago, when she evaded her own handlers. Three days ago, when she picked off the men sent to retrieve her with a Dragunov that didn’t belong to her. Two hours ago, when she realized that she cannot outrun the man with the bow—when she realized that she didn’t want to.

“Stand down.” Says the man with the bow. She thinks, vaguely, what a useless weapon. There is a single NR-40 holstered at her hip. She has no guns. She has no bullets, but by God, at least she’s not throwing around a weapon from the Palaeolithic era. The man—the child—throws a look around, and the masked men lower their guns.

The blond man steps closer. He has a handsome sort of face, she reasons. A nice enough face; fair proportions, a kind of insouciance that will wear off within twenty years. He has a nice enough voice. From this close, her eyes flicker from his feet to his exposed throat, noting the length of his step and the beat of blood in his veins. She measures her own speed against his—thinks, in some back corner of her mind, that she could do it. Even bleeding and gasping, she could do it; the Department did not tolerate weakness. She could have a knife in his throat before he could blink. Confirm this kill. Finish this mission.

“What’s your name?”

She doesn’t answer that question. The mere fact that he had to ask tells her that they must not trust him very much. Instead, she says, in American accented English: “What’s yours?”

There is a beat of silence. The man’s mouth moves. It quirks at the corner, and for a moment he looks so much like—her chest constricts. The blond man raises a hand to the comm at his ear, and says, “I’m bringing her in.”

 

In the old world, there is an old story, about an old man who could not die. Who guarded his own death jealously and cunningly, who devised all manners of traps and ingenious hoaxes to hold off the day of death. Though he was old, and corrupt, and avaricious, we are taught that immortality is possible. You just have to want it more than you want to live.

“You look tired.” She says. The dark skinned man opposite the chrome table from her has one hard eye and one eyepatch, and is wearing a black suit. There are bags under his eyes, and he has a perpetually downturned mouth, but his heart is beating the average 72 beats per minute, and she thinks that this is a man she can respect. “Paperwork?”

“Significantly increased after Agent Barton made his call.” He leans forward. “You’re paperwork, miss. Four hundred and thirty eight pages of it, and here I was, down to fifty.”

“How unfortunate for you.” She says.

“Very.” He replies. “For me, and also for Agent Barton. He will be undergoing a disciplinary hearing tomorrow, you understand. Breach of protocol. Obstruction of mission objectives.”

“These are serious concerns,” she says. A disciplinary hearing. It’s very… quaint. The words don’t quite fit together in her mind, not even in Russian do they sound right. She thinks discipline, and she thinks four grey walls and no food or water for three days. She thinks of a tank of water, a chair rigged with electrics. Discipline, in its most disciplined form, is a bullet between the C3 and the C4. “Agent Barton failed his mission, then.” A moment. “You sent him to—”

“Kill you.” Fury, Nicholas J says. “Terminate you. Put a bullet between your eyes and bring me your body to confirm the kill. This was a level six. So yes, he failed his mission. Anything short of a cartridge in your frontal lobe would have been a failure.”

She almost smiles. Instead, she leans forward with a balletic grace ingrained into muscle memory, rests her elbows on the table, and taps the centre of her forehead.

This time, it is Fury, Nicholas J who smiles.

“Miss Romanova,” he says, and her muscles tense. “If you wanted to be dead, you would be dead.”

She meets his eyes; hard and bright and sharp. He is still smiling.

“So the question is: why aren’t you?”

 

In the old world, there is a story about a man who was a tsar, who lived in a castle on a hill which was on a river which was on an island, surrounded on all sides by the push and pull of the amethyst sea. He guarded his death more jealously than he did his life, and constructed many a devious trap and many a clever hoax to keep his death safe. He was a jealous man, and a cunning man, and a crueller tsar you have never met in your life. But it worked, didn’t it?

He is not dead. He is still alive. He will wake in his castle on a hill, and of the thousand rooms, nine hundred and ninety nine will be dusted with cobwebs. And in each and every one, there is the ghost of a death never lived.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am on [tumblr](http://www.ilvalentinos.tumblr.com).


	2. Part I: Odette

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In 1895, Pierina Legnani played Odile and Odette, and as a display of her triumph and strength, she performed 32 fouettés en tournant in the Pas de Deux. She had gone off the page, had shattered the tableau with her finesse. They had called in Tchaikovsky’s little brother to alter the music, to contain her skill. She had exceeded the bounds of the form. She had risen above the text.

 

“An American.” Yelena says to her. Natalia is not looking at her, two steps behind. Instead, she meets her own eyes in the polished mirror. Her hand rests lightly on the barre; she is measuring, carefully, the angle of her extended leg. She lifts her chin, when she realizes that her back is just a smidgen off ramrod straight.

Natalia keeps her mouth shut. She only gives the barest indication that she had heard by turning her head slightly to the side. Yelena has pale gold hair, pulled tight into a bun at the back of her head. She has eyes like cornflowers in summer, and lips like a rose petal. The guards are already beginning to look at her. Natalia, for her part, still looks like a boy from the neck down. Down the line, some of the other girls are listening as well, though they are pretending not to.

“They are bringing in an American.” Yelena says, excitedly. “They say he is going to break us in.”

Down the corridor, there are footsteps. Natalia’s eyes flicker to the door. She counts the steps.

“Yelena, shut up.” She says, calmly.

Madame enters the room, and stops at the door. Yelena’s mouth clamp closed. Wordlessly, Madame gestures to Natalia, for her to step out of the line. She does, lowering her leg slowly. Her muscles ache.

“Thirty two,” Madame says.

Her stomach rumbles. Two days ago, one of her handlers had remarked that she could have done better at target practice than she did. When questioned, she had spoken back. Under her leotard, there are bruises blooming over her pale ribs, but what she regretted most was that she had missed out on dinner. The cooks had made pelmeni. She has not eaten in two days.

She settles her feet into the right position, and begins to turn.

One. Two. Three. The room spins around her. She feels lightheaded, but there is nothing for her to grab on to. Instead, she tenses her arms, grits her teeth, and pushes herself through. Four. Five. Six.

In 1895, in the old world, Pierina Legnani had performed in front of a screaming audience in what was once St. Petersburg, a Sodom and Gomorrah corruption of her Leningrad. She had played Odile, and she had performed thirty two fouettés en tournant for a screaming crowd, lights and applause and her name, repeated over and over back to her. Natalia closes her eyes, imagines white feathers trailing from her shoulders, the ache in her feet fading into a pleasant warmth, imagines a delirium of sights and sound—

Thirty two.

She stills, falling into the third position, and gazes back at Madame. She manages, very valiantly, not to fall.

Madame, a tall woman with black hair, twirls her finger. The other way.

Her nails are biting into the palm of her hand, and this is not comely in a young woman. Very deliberately, she loosens her grip. She begins to turn.

She thinks that she is bleeding. The bandages within her pointe shoes are soaking through, and she has never been as sure on her left as she has been on her right. There is something settling behind her eyes, a dull stabbing, and she is getting lightheaded, but failure is not an option. She spins, and the world blurs, and she feels sick, a vague rising of something in her stomach, but she has nothing to heave up; in the corner of her eyes, she sees Yelena’s yellow hair, and—

In 1895, Pierina Legnani played Odile and Odette, and as a display of her triumph and strength, she performed 32 fouettés en tournant in the Pas de Deux. She had gone off the page, had shattered the tableau with her finesse. They had called in Tchaikovsky’s little brother to alter the music, to contain her skill. She had exceeded the bounds of the form. She had risen above the text. In 1895—

Natalia falters on the last. Her ankle turns. A blinding pain shoots up her calf, and she bites down on her lip to stifle the cry.

There is a short silence. Madame turns, and opens the door. She nods to the guards outside.

Natalia is thrown into a grey room. She goes two more days without food or water. In the meantime, Ivan Petrovitch walks a silent man through the silent halls to a room of silent girls. They are bringing in an American. He is going to break you in.

 

She sings, in her cell.  She has been in this room enough times that she knows what is allowed her—writing on the walls is prohibited, as is urinating or defecating in the corner. If you fall asleep, the guards will come in and throw a bucket of ice cold water over you, to keep you awake, and keep doing it until you sit ramrod straight, freezing in the night air. Exercise is allowed.

She does a hundred push ups. She does a hundred pull ups on the metal bar over the door. She thinks, though she knows she shouldn’t, that with a little bit more momentum, with enough weight, with her legs pushed out at the right angle—there is a very good chance that she can break down that door. She is not the best in her class, but she knows she can be. In five years, she will be picked out of the rest. In ten years, no one will keep her in a grey room ever again.

She sings to herself. There is a vague melody that she hums under her breath, and she can’t remember where she heard it; knows it is not one of the concertos or sonatas that she can play from memory, on piano or violin. A bedside lullaby, it sounds like, to lull a restless child to sleep.

She begins to count the hours.

 

“He broke Olga’s leg yesterday.” Yelena says to her. Natalia is stretching, legs spread in a split. She folds down, so that the back of her spine is a long sinuous line, her forehead resting at her ankle. “And fractured two of Tatiana’s ribs. They had to carry her out.”

Natalia notes, silently, that she has seen both Olga and Tatiana for the last time; clad in pastels, arms braced on a barre, their reflections limned in afternoon gold.

“What’s he like?” She asks. She is not thinking of a face, or of a voice. She is thinking of his hands, of his feet and his stance, any preferred weapons, any contusions on the body that one might be able to spot through the uniform. A blind spot, an old scar that makes his parries slower, any shift in centre of gravity. She is not going to allow this American to break her bones. Not hers. And even if he does, she will stay silent and put herself through training and ballet and training and ballet until it heals by itself. They will not make her disappear. They will not say she failed.

“Six feet. 190 pounds.” Yelena says, gaze drifting, idle, to the door. The American, they say, is always punctual. The American is always attended by handlers. Yelena turns back to her, notes her eyes, and says: “I think he has an old scar in the left armpit, clean wound, knife, probably. One inch at the most. It doesn’t hinder him, but he holds himself differently at the shoulder.”

“Could be a sprained collarbone.” She is imagining her own kick, her thin leg and pale foot still clotted with blood from her pointe shoes. Hit a sprained collarbone at the right angle, and you can loosen the joint. Hit it again, apply the right kind of pressure at the right trajectory, and you can dislocate the arm. And while he flounders, she would bring her other foot up; she’d have to stretch for it, but she could do it—the back heel to the temple, and—

Ivan Petrovitch enters the room.

Natalia straightens. There is a boxing ring in the centre of the room, but the ground is not buffered with mattresses. If you fall, you fall hard. Through the rope, she spies a black clad man, idling behind Petrovitch. The group of chattering girls fall into silence.

Six feet. 190 pounds, possible wound on the left upper torso. The American is wearing all black: thick tactical boots, tactical wear, hair tied tactically out of his face. He is wearing gloves. Natalia tilts her head, watching the rise of his left shoulder under his long-sleeved shirt.

“Wrong.” She says to Yelena as she rises out of her split.

“What?”

Natalia pulls her spine up, ramrod straight, and looks Ivan Petrovitch in the eye, from across the ring. She says, without breaking her gaze: “he is not wounded at all.”

She is his favourite. She knows this without having to be told; the same way she knows that she is the best, though she has not shown it. The same way that she knows that Yelena talks too much, that Yelena is bright and warm—exactly the opposite of a Russian winter, and that like all blooms, she will wither when the cold comes. She knows she is his favourite, and she knows that the best must be saved for last. She inclines her head towards Petrovitch.

Petrovitch’s lips quirk in a small, fond smile. He steps into the centre of the room, and addresses the girls. Behind him, the American does not move from his fixed spot.

“Girls.” Petrovitch says. He has a kindly voice, the kind of voice that makes argument not only unnecessary, but crass. He gestures to the black presence behind him. “As before.”

On his way past, he taps Nina on the shoulder. Yelena is smirking.

The American is not watching the girls. He bends, and begins to unlace his boots. As he does so, Natalia spots something on his thigh; a sheen on a kind of material that is not black, is not leather. A holster. In it: a NR-40. She draws in a small breath.

Nina is a small girl; pale and dark haired, with quick darting eyes and a vicious smile. She is better with a garrotte than most of the class, though she is most comfortable with a rifle. In the centre of the ring, she rolls her shoulders, shifts her weight from one foot to the other. That is her first mistake.

The American rises, feet bare. Natalia’s nails are digging into her palms. He enters the ring, letting the rope fall behind him. He is standing nonchalantly, hands loose at his sides, shoulders relaxed. From where she is standing, three metres away behind him, he is almost entirely unmoving.

Two weeks ago, Nina had gotten into a fight with one of the other girls. She is quicker than a viper, and when she sprang at the other girl, she hadn’t used fists, or a knife, or a gun. She had used her nails. When she was done, the handlers had decided that it is the other girl, and not Nina, who must be taken out of commission. A scratched face is of no use to anybody.

When Nina pounces, the American grabs her leg with his right hand, and gives a sharp twist with his left. There is a sickening crunch, and Nina is lying outside the ring, five meters away.

There is a short beat of silence. The American settles back into his pose, hands loose at his sides. Around her, the girls are silent, and unmoving. Yelena’s eyes are wide, her lips white.

When Ivan Petrovitch crosses the room, he taps Natalia’s shoulder.

They are already pulling Nina out of the room, her screams muffled behind a gag sloppily applied. Nobody meets her gaze. No one even looks at that corner of the room. Natalia steps forward, duck beneath the rope, and enter the ring. In the far corner, Nina is screaming, pleading, as they forcefully shove her out.

“No. No, no, no—please—don’t—I can do better, I can do—”

The door slams shut. Natalia lifts her chin.

For the first time, she sees the American’s face.

He is younger than she imagined. The first thing she notices is that there is a cut on his recently shaved jaw that does not correspond to a razor held in his own hand. The second thing she notes is that the hair falling behind his ear is ragged, and looks like it has been cut with a combat knife. The third thing she notes is that behind his slate blue eyes, there is nothing. Not a thing.

Ah, she thinks.

There is a reason why the Department never has to worry about conflict of loyalties. There is a reason why defectors are unheard of within these halls; a statistical anomaly that belongs to other, less efficient branches of the Motherland. There is a reason why their faith is absolute, why their faith is—in the end—unnecessary.

He has a foot on her, and almost a hundred pounds. More than that, Natalia is willing to bet her next meal that the American does not care about broken bones the way she cares about broken bones.

What does a machine want? What does a ghost fear, if it does not fear death?

“Hello.” Natalia says.

Out of the corner of her eyes, Ivan Petrovitch tilts his head. The American gives no indication that he has heard. Instead, he holds her gaze and begins to pace, one foot in front of another. She mirrors him, keeping the same distance between the two of them.

“I’ve heard rumours about you.” She says. She does not tear her eyes from his face, does not so much as blink. Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees Petrovitch step closer. The girls are beginning to murmur among themselves. “They say you’re the best we have.”

Blink once, shift your focus for a quarter of a second, and he will strike. There has been rumours of an operative within these halls, rumours of a man they say cannot die; a man they have pulled from death itself. In Bucharest, there had been a shot, through rain and snow and hail at a distance of twelve hundred metres, made in an impossible timeframe of an opening, with a precision unheard of even for this Department. In East Berlin, there had been a man who had been selling secrets to the wrong people, and there had been a carefully blended variation of cyanide in his evening cabernet shiraz. And then, there had been the orphanage—

“We’re not supposed to know about you.” She says. “But if the handlers didn’t want to us to talk, they would have shut us up for good. The diplomat in Paris, two years ago—was that you?”

Blink and you’ll miss it. The fingers on the American’s right hand twitches.

“What about Budapest?” She asks. Something is clicking into place behind the American’s eyes. Her ankle is still weak from her fall the other day, and now she feels its faint ache. The American has knives holstered at his thigh, and he is most definitely not wounded in the left arm.

This is not a combat exercise she can win. This is not a combat exercise.

“What about the hospital in Prague?” She is almost babbling now, anticipation building in her chest, readying to burst. The American’s fists tighten. “The orphanage—”

“You talk too much.” He says, and lunges.

He is fast. This is all she has time to process before she launches herself, rolling between his legs until she stands behind him on the other side of the ring. She is breathing hard, hands fisted at her side. She keeps herself small and tense. She is thinking of escape routes, thinking of the precise angle at which she has to launch herself to land a hit—he is not wounded on the left side. If anything, that is the side she should avoid.

He turns, and kicks.

She feels the hit land in her stomach like a battering ram; the breath goes out of her lungs and it is muscle memory, only, that saves her, that tells her the way to follow up a hit is to keep going and keep going and keep going, until you are the last one standing. She is going numb, but she manages to spin, manages to slide past him again, feels his left fist blurring past her face. A fraction of a second earlier, and it would have made contact. A fraction of a second earlier and—

She spots, almost in a haze, the knife in his boot.

The American is not even breathing hard. He turns slowly, and everything about him says that he has all the time in the world. She rises on shaky legs.

When he lunges again, she makes her move.

He is expecting her to evade; expecting her to dodge, because now he knows that she is not Nina. He is expecting her to slide, again, between his legs, come up behind him and wait for the next hit. He is expecting her to be clever, because this is not a combat exercise. The American lunges, and she launches herself into a twirl, imagines feathers trailing from her shoulders, imagines flight.

In 1985, Pierina Legnani had performed in front of a screaming crowd. As a display of her strength and triumph, she had performed 32 fouettés en tournant in the Pas de Deux of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. She had exceeded the bounds of the music, she had triumphed above the walls of the form.

This is not a training exercise, and Natalia is not Nina, not Olga, not Tatiana. The American keeps himself low, and a fraction of a second before he adjusts himself for her unexpected trajectory, she has wrapped her thighs around his neck, and given a twist.

He grunts in surprise, and a second later, the back of her head hits the pavement hard. Stars light behind her closed lids, and for a moment she can’t breathe. The American has the fingers of his right hand wrapped around her throat, and his left is coming down towards her face. She closes her eyes.

She feels the impact as it connects. A few inches from her face, the pavement is cracking under the impact.

She opens her eyes slowly.

Above her, the American has a small crease between his eyebrows. The silence around them is deafening. Slowly, he brings his left hand up to his mouth, and pulls off the leather glove with his teeth.

She draws in a sharp breath. Ivan Petrovitch is yelling now, calling to the guards. “Get them out! Get them out—take them back to the bunkers—go—go—”

He is not wounded. In the low light, the American’s metal fist glints silver.

“This one.” He says to Petrovitch. His right hand does not loosen at her throat. If anything, it tightens. “This is the one you are looking for.”

Petrovitch barks an order. She is his favourite, she thinks vaguely, still numb, as five armed guards enter the ring, their Dragunovs aimed at the back of the American’s head. The American does not move. Petrovitch enters the ring.

“Stand down.” He says to the American. “Stand down!”

For a moment, she thinks they are going to shoot him in front of her, thinks that they are going to splatter his blood all across her face, ruin her shirt when she has so few. There is a second of tense silence, and the guards tighten their grip. And then the American stands.

“This one.” He says. “This is the one you want.”

Petrovitch’s gaze falls on the empty holster at his thigh. He turns to Natalia.

In her hand, the NR-40 gleams, the blade the same glittering silver as the American’s arm.

 

*

 

“You talk too much.” The American had told her.

She has three fractured ribs and a bruise in the shape of his foot on her stomach, blooming red and purple across her pale skin. In 1895, Pierina Legnani had risen above her form, had transformed the text. In the breath before the first turn, there had been silence. In the split second after the thirty second, there had been chaos.

“You didn’t land a hit.” Petrovitch says to her after. “If this had been in the field, he would have killed you.”

“Yes.” She replies. “But this wasn’t a combat exercise.”

Petrovitch watches her carefully. “I wanted all of you to know that you couldn’t beat him. He is not our best. He is the best. If you don’t know when to back down, then you are worse than dead. Worse than blind and deaf and dumb, because he would have taken you alive, and made you talk. The objective was simply get out of the ring.”

She holds her silence.

“You knew that, didn’t you, Natalia?”

She keeps her mouth shut.

“Then why didn’t you? You had a chance.”

Underneath her hands, the blade of the NR-40 is warming to the touch. “I did better than pass the test.” She says. “I changed it.”

In five years, no one will remember the names Nina, Olga, or Tatiana. But in five years, they will all remember that Natalia Alianovna Romanova had disarmed the Winter Soldier on an empty stomach.

She is thrown into solitary confinement for disobeying objectives. That night, Petrovitch sends her a blanket and a meal. Vodka, a steak, roast potatoes, and a thick slab of freshly baked black bread. They let her keep the knife.

 

*

 

It is almost three years before she sees him again. She turns sixteen at the Palais Garnier in Paris. She has a woman’s form now, and her lips are painted red. She has on a dress meant for an older woman that is long and black and clings agreeably, leaving her shoulders bare, and she is accompanying a German diplomat who has a taste for women younger than is strictly smiled upon.

It was supposed to be an assignment for two girls; she had been paired with Yelena before she had been called to Siberia, and intelligence had decreed that while the situation is not ideal, Natalia is more than capable of handling the target alone.

She is Laura Matthers tonight; she has a boarding school British accent and a laugh that is both light and husky whenever the German—Fuerst—gets too close. Laura Matthers knows that she is beautiful, and Laura Matthers does not mind being touched, so long as you pay the right price. On stage, Odile has just arrived at the ball.

“I used to dance, you know.” She says to Fuerst, leaning close so that her breath brushes the outer shell of his ear. They are in their own private box, curtained in red velvet. There is a glass of champagne in her hand, and a waiter waiting outside the door for any needs she may have. There are so many things she can do here that would go unnoticed until the curtain draws, and Fuerst would enjoy only a handful of them. She rests her hand lightly on his knee. “I could dance this coda in my sleep.”

“Perhaps we shall find out later just how well you can dance.” Fuerst says. Laura Matthers giggles, and Natalia Romanova counts the increased pulse in his throat, feels a vague twinge of contempt.

Laura Matthers giggles, and Natalia Romanova, out of sight, drops a pinch of white powder into Fuerst’s glass.

SP-117 has no taste, no smell, and no colour. SP-117 is effectively operational within the minute of ingestion. Laura Matthers giggles into the crook of Fuerst’s neck, and Natalia Romanova waits for him to take a sip.

On stage, Siegfried has just been convinced to dance with Odile, though his heart belongs to Odette, the white princess. It is a perennial dilemma of the heart, of the soul; it is the perennial crux of living. In Fuerst’s home country, there is the story of the doppelganger; an evil version of yourself that haunts your time on earth, that shadows your every step. A mirror image refracted back with strange angles. Through the glass darkly.

Fuerst’s eyes cloud, and Natalia Romanova asks: “Who sold you the file?”

She has seven minutes. Fuerst’s tongue is lolling in his mouth, and Natalia Romanova asks again: “Who sold you the file?”

“I—” Fuerst is looking at her in confusion. Six and a half. “I—”

She has a gun holstered at her thigh, and she had hoped she wouldn’t have to use it. She would have preferred a knife, but for appearance’s sake, nothing threatens quite like a Makarov.

“I—”

“Your source in the Kremlin. Who is it?”

Fuerst’s fingers begin to shake. She catches the glass of champagne neatly as he drops it, and sets it on the low table. “I—”

The drug takes effect. Fuerst looks around, as if confused. He meets her eyes, blinks twice, and says, “Vasilova.”

Below, on the stage, Siegfried has exited, and Odile dominates the floor. The orchestra rears for its crescendo. The conductor gestures for the drums, there is a breath, and Odile begins to turn. The first of her thirty two. Natalia Romanova leans forward to kiss the German, positioning her body over his as she unhooks the gun from her thigh. The music rises, and she pulls the trigger. The bullet leaves its chamber, and she has left the box before he has started to bleed.

Outside the opera house, it is snowing. She wraps her fur close around her bare shoulders, and slips into a black car. Somewhere within, the waiter has found the body. Somewhere within, there is a scream.

“Hotel le Bristol.” She tells the driver. There is no response. She says, again: “Hotel le Bristol.”

The driver says, in Russian: “You should have used a knife.”

He is wearing a chauffeur’s uniform, his hair neatly trimmed beneath the cap. The town car hums down the Boulevard des Capucines, and the driver’s left hand glints silver in the dark.

 

The rendezvous point is three miles outside the city, an old bunker left over from the war. They do not speak much. The Winter Soldier does not even breathe a breath more than is necessary to keep his body functioning. Natalia spends the drive cleaning her Makarov and watching the streetlight spill into the car like gold. It paints everything yellow, the occasional shadow flickering over the Winter Soldier’s dead eyes.

“How did they do it?” She asks, as they approach city limits. The interior of her Makarov is smooth and oiled, and she slides it into the holster at her thigh. The Winter Soldier stares straight ahead, hands on the wheel. He is a careful driver; a bit too fast, but never fast enough to draw attention, every hairpin turn considered, as if he has mapped out the exact numerical angle of the curve. He does not reply, and she makes a disdainful noise, looking out the window.

There is silence. She considers the name: Vasilova. When the order had come through for the name and for the blood, she had not questioned it. He had been buying secrets, and whatever secret he had recently bought was too valuable for it to slip past the Iron Curtain. The nature of buying being, of course, that someone was selling. Supply and demand; tenets of a system black with rot. A single thread which lead to someone within their midst, and the Department wanted that particular thread pulled out of the line-up without fuss. There will be a purge soon.

The smallest sound makes her turn her head. In the front seat, the Winter Soldier’s steady breathing has broken on an irregularity. She watches him carefully. The light from a passing streetlamp hits his face, and she notes a small crease between his eyebrows.

“I don’t know.” He says finally. He is still staring straight ahead, and Natalia opens her mouth to ask—did it hurt? What can you use it for? How has it not pulled out your sternum? Before she can get a word out, the Winter Soldier asks: “Do you love your country?”

“Yes.” She replies, without thinking.

“What would you do for it? For the Motherland? For the revolution?”

It is the most she has ever heard him say. You told me I talked too much, she remembers. “Anything.” She says.

“Even if it meant—” He cuts himself off. They are coming into remote country. He is still staring straight ahead. “It hurt.” He says finally. “I think it hurt.”

The arm or the training? She wants to ask. Or the conditioning?

“It was worth it.” She says, with conviction. “You’re the best. I want to be like you. I want to be the best.”

“You have to beat me first.” He says, and she smiles.

She does not ask any more questions. They drive in silence, until they arrive at an old chateau, at the end of a long, lonely road surrounded by snow dusted trees.

The car idles to a stop in front of the house. The Winter Soldier pulls the key out of the ignition, and sits very still in his seat. There is no more irregularity in his breathing. He pulls the cap off his head, and stares straight ahead.

“Who was it?” He asks.

She does not know what it is that makes her stop, what it is that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up straight; only that it does, and this has kept her alive more than once. Her hand rests on the gun in the holster, fingers gripped lightly around the hilt. There is less than three feet’s distance between them, and she has seen him in action. He is fast, but so is she. And if the rumours about what happens to him between missions are true—

She is better than she was three years ago. He is—he is blanker.

She can get the gun out before he reaches for her. It is his right arm that is facing her, so she has a relatively good chance before he can get a good grip with his left. She can make the shot. She can shoot the Department’s most valuable asset in the forehead before he can put his metal fingers around her throat.

“Take your hand off the gun.” He says, “And tell me the name.”

“Fuerst isn’t your mission. He was mine.”

“And you are mine.” The Winter Soldier replies. “You are my mission. Your loyalty is my chief concern.”

Something turns in her stomach. For a second, her vision goes red, and she does loosen her grip on the gun, fingers slipping around the metal before she remembers herself. A split second later, it is out of the holster, and pointed at the back of the Winter Soldier’s neck, positioned to hit between the C3 and C4.

He gives no indication that he has noticed the barrel at his neck. His voice is flat. “Level seven, code red. Mission objective: secure compliance of remaining recruits using whatever force necessary. Centralize control and contain any possible defection—”

“I would never.” She hisses, and the barrel of the gun bites harder into his neck. There is a part of her, a little girl never silenced, which is screaming, which is sobbing in fear. “I would never—I gave my life—”

The Winter Soldier bears this patiently. He says, almost lightly, if anything about him was capable of lightness: “I need the name.”

“And then what?” She bites out. There is nothing in her which is not them, which had not been bred into her with electrodes and cold. There is—Natalia is loyal. Natalia is the most loyal of all of them. Natalia kills because the Motherland asked her to. She is loyal. She is loyal she is—“Are you going to use a knife like you did in that orphanage? Have you got this car rigged?”

Pull the trigger, she thinks. Do it. Do it now. Get out of here. Pull the trigger. Pull the trigger.

She takes too long. One second the Winter Soldier is sitting still in his seat, staring blankly at the snow on the windshield, and in the next he has turned, grabbed her by the elbow, and given a violent twist. She fires, is not sure it hit, and his expression doesn’t change as he looks down at her. He brings his silver hand down.

 

In her earliest memories, there had been snow. Snow, and yellow walls, and her own breath misting in front of her face. She has a vague memory of a woman with red hair, who smiles at her kindly, and Natalia knows that she loves her the way she knows how to disassemble a rifle in under ten seconds or sever the carotid artery with nothing more than industrial wire. This woman loves her, and this woman sings her to sleep. This woman puts warm milk in her hands, and kisses her on the cheek before she puts her to bed. This woman dies with a garrotte around her throat, and this woman, like warmth and lullabies and childhood, is gone.

“You have a new mother now.” Petrovitch says to her, sometime after. “She is mother to us all.”

She cries, and is beaten. She cries out, and is beaten again. She demands to see her mother, and is thrown into a cold cell without food or water. She screams, and they put her into solitary confinement in a room so thickly soundproof that the only company she has is the sound of her own heart; beating, beating, beating. It never stops beating.

She is six, and has never been so aware of the sound of her life refusing to ebb away, has never been so terrified of the sound of her own heart. More than the electrodes or the tanks or the cells, it is this that keeps her shivering into the night, years after. She screams herself hoarse in the few hours after, begging to be left out, begging to escape from the sound of her own life. Sometimes at night she still dreams of that room; the sound of her own heart permeating through the din, a clockwork mechanism that keeps count of her mortality.

“You have a new mother now.” Petrovitch says to her, sometime after. “She is mother to us all.”

She learns not to scream, soon after. She learns not to cry, either. She learns not to speak back, not to look challengingly at her handlers, learns to duck her head and comply. She is Petrovitch’s favourite; she is the pupil most like him, who knows when to hold her tongue and when not to, who understands the preciousness of what beats in her chest; how every thump is hard won. How every thump drives you mad.

Petrovitch tells her, in quiet moments, that she has the makings of something great. He knew she was special from the start, he tells her. He knew she would serve her mother with all that she is, with all that she can be. He tells her that she is a wolf in a sea of girls, and does not bother to mention that wolves and girls; they are the same.

What does Natalia Romanova believe? What does Natalia Romanova whisper like a prayer, what does Natalia Romanova worship, if she has never been to a church, if she has never sat at a pew, if she has never held a bead of rosaries in her hands?

Natalia Romanova believes—

 

She wakes up in the dark.

Her hands are tied, flat, to the arms of an antique chair. Her feet are tied at the ankles to the legs, and the industrial grade nylon is strong enough that she has no hope of breaking them. The Winter Soldier is sitting opposite her, and he is sharpening a knife.

He says, without looking at her, “Who did Fuerst name?”

She clamps her mouth shut, gritting her teeth. She is not—they are not strangers to enhanced interrogation. They are not strangers to pain. Water. Electricity. Knives. She knows them all, has sat through them all. The Winter Soldier sets down his k-bar, and asks, again, “Who did Fuerst name?”

What does Natalia Romanova believe in?

She says nothing. If they truly believe—if they really think that she would turn—then this name is the only thing keeping her alive. If they would—

“They wipe you between missions.” She says to him, instead. “They strap you down and wipe your mind clean. You killed an orphanage of children in Novocherkassk. You murdered a squadron in Siberia. In Prague you blew up a hospital. In Paris—”

Something flickers over the Winter Soldier’s face, his hands are very still on his knife. The single lamp in the room casts a gold strip of light on the wooden floor, and she watches his fingers tighten, infinitesimally, on the knife. There is a crease between his eyebrows again.

“I thought you were a defector, at first.” She says. “An American who believed in the revolution. Who believed in the Motherland. But you’re not, are you? You’re just a machine with a kill order. You can’t believe in anything because you’re not human.”

She meets his eyes steadily. Something in them looks almost like confusion, like he has woken up from a stupor and does not know where he is. I believe, she thinks. I believe in the revolution, in the children of the revolution, in the red star on your shoulder. I am human and I believe, and I have something that you don’t, and if you let me out—

He says, not quite as steadily: “Who did Fuerst name?”

She says, softly: “what is your name?”

For a long time, there is silence. The room is tense, and she cannot breathe. What does a machine want? What does a ghost fear if he does not fear death?

The Winter Soldier stands. In the corner of the room, there is a gramophone, with a disk at the ready. The Winter Soldier picks up the needle delicately, and places it on the disk. It begins to rotate.

For a moment, it does not start, and she watches him cross the room and exit through the door.

The door closes behind him, and the sound of a heart beating, steady and calm, begins to reverberate through the ground.

 

It thunders through the floorboards. Crawls up the walls, the thumping of her own heart beating in time with the gramophone. Her hands twist in the restraints, the nylon scrubbing her wrists raw. The beating shakes the ground, the old decrepit walls seeming to creep in closer with each beat. There is—there is something crawling, in the back of head. It is as if she is trapped inside a giant, as if she is small and helpless and listening to the beating heart of something bigger than she is, and stronger, and more, and she is surrounded by arteries and organs, beating against a giant ribcage, a titanic heart beating above her like a drum. She is—she is—

She does not scream. She bites down on her tongue until her teeth tear through the muscle, until blood runs down her chin. When she can’t take it anymore, when she needs to hear something other than the constancy of her own heart, she rocks backwards and forwards on her chair, the legs slamming into the ground repeatedly to break up the sound—that sound—and she does not scream, she sings, sings songs about firebirds and Vasilisas, wicked grandmothers and huts on chicken legs, about Ivan Tsarevitch, about wolves and girls, about a deathless man trapped in a basement and if only—if only it would—stop—stop—

When she can’t sing anymore, she whispers. She recounts all the poisons she knows, their administration, their effects, their prescribed uses, their remedies. She recounts: there are fifteen ways to slit this vein, this is how you account for wind speed and velocity, these are the evils of the imperialist regime, in 1895 Pierina Legnani—

She does not start screaming until she crosses the two day mark. As records go, it is a personal best.

 

“Who did he name?”

“Who did he name?”

“Who did he name?”

What does Natalia Romanova pray to? What does she worship?

How wholeheartedly does she believe in the Motherland? How absolutely has she given her body and her heart and her soul to her homeland? How much does she love this snow, how much does she love Leningrad, how much does she love her brothers and sisters and her comrades and the sound of a hundred million voices joined in a single revolution? How much of her belongs to her, and her alone?

To hoard yourself is selfish, Ivan Petrovitch told her. Dulce et decorum est prop patria mori.

What does Natalia Romanova pray to? What does she worship?

“Who did he name?”

 

It has been four days. She stinks of sweat and piss, and she can barely hear it anymore, can barely register the thump. Instead, she is painfully aware of her own heart beating in her chest, a muscle the size of her fist, beating without her will in her chest. Like she has been torn open. Like the whole world can see her on a molecular level.

The only thing more terrifying that her own beating heart is the idea of it being stopped.

She is vaguely aware of someone kneeling down in front of her. Hands come down, gentle on her forearm, one cold, one warm. The Winter Soldier says, softly, and for a second he sounds almost human, almost made of breakable stuff. The Winter Soldier says—

“Natalia,” he says softly. “I need the name.”

What does Natalia Romanova pray to?

“I hope they wipe you clean.” She says. Her voice comes out hoarse and cracked. “I hope they strap you down and pull you out at the root.”

The Winter Soldier pulls back. She looks up.

“Not just your name.” She whispers, and takes a vicious pleasure in the way his eyebrows furrow. “I hope they take everything except your guns and your knives. I hope they make you forget how to speak.” And then: “Get the name yourself.”

She prays to the sound of her own heart.

The Winter Soldier stands, and takes the needle off the disk.

 

*

 

He unties the nylon from her arms and feet, and carries her to a dank, decrepit bathroom. There is an old bath, and he dumps her into it, not gently. She doesn’t think he could be gentle if he tried. He does take care to bring warm water, though. He scrubs her hair for her like he is washing a dog, but he has been programmed with enough awareness of human sensibilities to not wash anything else for her. He leaves her the water, and a bar of soap.

Two hours later, a team in black shows up, to extract the Winter Soldier and the junior recruit. It is Ivan Petrovitch who walks into the bathroom.

“Natalia,” he says.

This is it, she thinks. A bullet between the C3 and the C4, and oblivion. The heart stops beating in the most banal of ways.

She huddles into herself, wrapped in an old, moth bitten towel. She looks from Petrovitch, to the men in black, and finally to the Winter Soldier.

He is looking at her with something like recognition. The sun is rising, outside, bars of pale light filtering through the shuttered window, and for a second something flickers in his eyes like—like—

It is gone, as quick as it came. The Winter Soldier turns to Petrovitch.

“This one.” He says. “This is the one you want.”

 

*

 

Yelena Belova had been born to a wealthy government official who had become disillusioned with the regime, and had sought to defect to the United States. Before he could do so, and bring his family with him, he had been shot in the street; a botched mission, he had survived the bullet that had been blocked by the sternum. They put him in a hospital under maximum security and put his family in a bunker. He had only gotten as far as Prague.

Yelena Belova’s last memory as a girl was the sound of her family screaming, and gun shots. On her gramophone, they had played a looped bit of sound from an American action movie, and she had broken after three days.

Years later, Natalia Romanova finds out that because so many resources and so much time has gone into training Yelena, the Department cannot afford to let her go. She became a valuable asset to the regime, and when the regime fell she was offered a comfortable job in intelligence. She married and had children, and died peacefully in her sleep.

 

They give her the serum a week later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am on [tumblr](http://www.ilvalentinos.tumblr.com).


	3. Part II: Odile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She should have put a bullet in his head as soon as she saw him waiting under that fire escape like an old dog for a master who is never going to come home. She should have shot him, and had them remove the metal arm from his body, and left him in a dumpster, and burned the remains. A gun that does not fire is of no use. A knife with a dull edge is worthless. He is a defective weapon. He is just a scrap of metal.

“What is Codename Black Widow?”

Fury tells her that MI6 has had a standing kill order on Codename Black Widow since 1984. The CSI, FBI, and Mossad want whoever masterminded the project or have used the name to be brought in alive. Codename Black Widow is wanted for contraventions to the Geneva Convention in seventeen countries.

“What happened in England?” Fury asks her.

She presses her lips close together, and tilts her head at him. “Someone died.”

She wonders how much she can tell him, how much she can say to these people before she turns their blood cold. I have—I have killed women and children, and toppled regimes. I have slaughtered sons for the sins of their fathers, I have given daughters to the abyss. I have killed and killed and killed, I have drowned myself in red.

“There was a government official.” She says, staring at a spot slightly to the left of Fury’s head. “He had been having second thoughts. He had to be neutralized.”

A moment. Fury fixes her with one eye. “Just him?”

Her throat is dry. Her voice comes out slightly cracked. “And his daughter.”

There is a moment of silence, and Fury turns to the reflective glass on the side of the interrogation chamber. He makes a small movement: cut the sound.

She remembers a dark head, and nothing else. She had taken her outside, and the girl had been crying, but she had been biting down on her mouth to stifle the cries. She had been impressed, because it had taken her years to learn to do that, and she had recognized that this girl had potential. She had dark hair. Natalia remembers this, and only this. She doesn't even remember the girl's face.

"What do you want from us, Miss Romanova?" Fury asks. "We've never captured one of you alive before. We expected we never would. Why did you come quietly?"

I am—she thinks. I am not alive. I was not alive. I was not dead, but I was not alive. I was existing, in blood and snow and metal rust, and I—

"Because you need me." She says. "Because I think I may need you."

Fury sits. "S.H.I.E.L.D. is not in the business of protecting war criminals, Miss Romanova.” He leans forward, every word carefully chosen. “Before you came to us, you were a fanatic. Now that you're sitting here, you have proved yourself a hired thug. S.H.I.E.L.D. has plenty of hired thugs."

"Not like me." She says. "You've never had a mercenary like me."

There is silence. She asks, quietly: "How old are you, Mr Fury?"

"Director Fury."

"You're young for a Director. I'd put you at late thirties, early forties. Do you know how old I am, Director Fury? Do you know how long I have been doing what I do?"

"I make a point never to ask a lady her age, Miss Romanova. It's considered rude." There is no barb in the remark. Fury is looking at her with open curiosity now.

"I've rigged bombs in countries that have been wiped off the map. I'm the reason why treaties exist today that didn't exist fifty years ago. Codename Black Widow is not a team, Director Fury. It's not even a programme." She sits up straighter, thinks of Madame and Petrovitch and Yelena Belova, happily rotting away in an old home somewhere. She is still here. She is not alive, but she is not dead, and that has to count for something. "Codename Black Widow is me."

There is silence. She imagines a dozen men crammed into the room on the other side of the glass, desperate to listen in.

She says, softly: "You've never had a mercenary like me."

 

*

 

"You look good." Yelena says to her. She is nursing a cup of black coffee, hands pale against the porcelain cup. They are fine and soft, the nails painted a delicate pink. Natalia wonders how long it has been since Yelena last handled a garrotte.

"So do you." Natalia replies. They don't look the same age—not anymore. Yelena was three months younger than her, she remembers. Three months younger and looked two years older. If she hazarded a guess, Yelena is in her mid twenties now, her girlhood prettiness bleeding into something angled, something refined. She looks like a woman taking her baby sister out for lunch.

Yelena is an honorary alumnus of the Department, high ranking in the intelligence office; when given the choice, she had picked intelligence over fieldwork. Her graduation from the state's most elite programme had fast tracked her to directing her own little division.  She specializes in military intelligence and analysis in central Europe, and she has a townhouse in Stalingrad. Sometimes, because Natalia's identity is too precious to risk, Yelena goes back to the Department to give talks to the recruits.

"You haven't aged a day." Yelena says to her, and there is a twinge of envy, a vague wistfulness in her voice. Last week Natalia killed a man and his mistress with a letter opener and a strip of wire. Last week, Natalia had taken a bullet to the shoulder, and had to dig it out with a knife. "I didn't know if Petrovitch would let you out for a date."

"He made an exception." Natalia replies. He had said, report at 1700 hours. She had asked it as a personal favour. "He was in a good mood."

"So the man in Kiev," Yelena says, and she had always been too liberal with words, had never been quite as silent as she had needed to be. "That was you?"

"Kiev is a big city." She says. "There are a lot of men in Kiev."

Yelena smiles. "And they gave you leave for it. That's… generous. That's very generous."

"They're not without mercy." She replies.

It had been her first operation alone. Quick and efficient, and clean as a whistle. The right level of drama, with the requisite mystery characteristic of the Department. Petrovitch had been very proud and very impressed, and had told her how well she had served her mother.

"Do you ever wonder—" she says, and stops. She does not—it is not her place to question mission objectives; why this person must die and not this one, why he must be brought in alive or why her family must be terminated alongside her. She says: "do you ever wonder why they picked me and not you?"

What does she remember about her training? She remembers that there was pain. She had cried, and then learned not to. She had screamed, and was taught that screaming was not comely in a young woman, and silence was preferable. She had learned about poisons and knives, and had never been given a gun. Her last mission as a recruit had been a German in a private box at the Palais Garnier.

"Every day." Yelena shrugs, unbothered. "I did beat you in single combat."

Natalia stills. Yelena is looking at her strangely. "Single combat."

"I broke your jaw and dislocated your collarbone." Yelena says. "That was after firearms though. You'll never make a sniper, but you were always a better shot."

I—

"Not that you would ever have had to be a sniper." Yelena says, snorts. "That would have been fifteen years of training gone to waste."

A dime a dozen, snipers are. Yelena is of the opinion that there is a sniper in every department, there are snipers everywhere you turn; you couldn't walk down a hallway in the Kremlin without stepping on a sniper.  Yelena is of the opinion that sniping is just math, just waiting. There is no madness in the method.

She realizes that she has been staring too long, and Yelena is looking back, eyebrows furrowed. Natalia takes a sip of her coffee. "How is work?"

Yelena shrugs. "Work is work."

Which is to say: people are people and people die, intelligence is bought and sold and I had to put in extra time on the weekends again, and won’t someone relocate that new girl in the office who is too nervous to be of use to anybody? Work is work.

Natalia wonders how many executive level orders calling for extractions and funding for special ops Yelena has signed this week. How many agents wait at the other end of her web, waiting for a tug from the hub. It is only good fortune that Natalia’s handlers have higher clearances than Yelena; it turns her stomach to think that one of her orders could have come from Yelena’s polished hands.

The waiter arrives with their stroganoff. Natalia picks up a napkin and lays it out, flat in her lap. Yelena is already picking up her spoon.

“How is your husband?” Natalia asks, and she feels nothing, nothing, as Yelena’s eyes light up.

Yelena gushes about their house, about his job in the military liaison office. They are going to try for a child, and are thinking about getting a dog. They want to visit Crimea together, but they have to visit his mother beforehand, whom she loathes, but they are all family now and what can you do?

Natalia sits back, listens with a smile. She thinks, there are fifteen exits out of this restaurant and I know the number plates of every car I walked by on the street. That waiter is stealing silverware from the kitchens and the woman down the row from us is having an affair. She is thinking, I wish—

Natalia smiles when Yelena stops for breath. “Crimea is lovely this time of year.”

 

It is 1962, and there are bombs in Cuba.

Ivan Petrovitch purses his lips on the edge of his tea cup. Spread out, in front of him, is a selection of cakes, syrup, cookies and jam. Natalia’s tea is going cold.

“Stupid of him,” Petrovitch says. His hair is dyed ink black, but she spots the grey growing out at the roots. There are new lines on his face that she does not remember from before. “Utter incompetence.”

She does not say a word. There is a cookie resting on her plate, but she makes no move to touch it. Petrovitch sighs heavily, and looks across the table at her.

He is a kindly looking man; neat dark hair parted at the side, warm eyes and a mouth that is always vaguely smiling, even when he is calling for another shock of electricity, another fingernail pulled off, another needle in the wrist, another scream, another scream, another scream. He tilts his head at her, as if he is waiting for an answer.

“Should something be done?” She asks, finally. “The right agent in D.C.—”

“This is not a matter of agents or recruits, or even of Widows, my dear.” Petrovitch says, smiling at her kindly. “This is a matter to be settled between nations. We shall have to ride this out like everyone else. Still.” His mouth twists again. “It is an embarrassment. To the state, to our credibility, to our common sense. The Department—”

She has a vague idea that men talk after sex. Women less so, perhaps because women use this trick too much for them to fall into the same trap. Men talk when sated, and often need only the right prod. She wonders why Petrovitch is telling her this. She wonders if perhaps—

She would know. Surely, she would know if he has ever—

“The Department is the only thing standing between this country and chaos.” Petrovitch says. He sets down his tea cup, and stares her in the eye. "How much do you know of the Winter Soldier, Natalia?"

She stills. She repeats the information back to him, from memory. "He is the Department's most valuable asset. He has never failed a mission."

She knows that he is the last resort, the expensive whiskey taken out of the cabinet only once a year, the weapon that you only have to fire once. The Department does not tolerate incompetence, but it knows, like all good handlers, that sometimes agents are only human, and that humans, as a side effect of that particular humanity, fail. The Winter Soldier is not human. The Winter Soldier then, one can extrapolate, does not fail.

"The Winter Soldier's status in our ranks," Petrovitch says, and pauses delicately. He meets her eyes over the brim of the cup. "Is no longer singularly unique. I don't think we've told you recently how impressed we are with your training, Natalia."

She inclines her head. Her throat is dry, and for the first time, she picks up her tea cup and takes a sip. It is too sweet. Petrovitch's fingers are tapping on the table, a small drum beat. Her eyes drop. She has been trained to watch for the minutest flicker of the eyes, the smallest stutter in the pulse, watching for the butter fly's wings in order to predict the hurricane. The pages are turning.

It is 1962, and there are bombs in Cuba. Across the world, billions of people hold their breaths for 13 days, waiting for the declaration of war on the radio, crackling across the airwaves, waiting for decimation at the touch of a button. It is 1962, their leader has been dead for nine years and the man sitting in his seat in the Kremlin is but a pale shadow. It is 1962, and the world is full of ghosts.

"The Winter Soldier…" Petrovitch says, carefully, "may be defective."

Defective. There is a moment, and she mulls the word over in her head, rolls it around in her mouth. What do you do with a defective weapon?

 Natalia sets down her tea cup. "I see."

 

Two days later, Natalia has crossed west of the wall, where she is kindly received by a friend of the state. From West Berlin, she boards a flight.

It is snowing in New York. Her boot touches the ground, steps into thick snow, and she has a scarf wrapped around her neck. Her breath mists white in front of her. In a comfortable apartment on Park Avenue, she is briefed.

Two weeks ago, the Winter Soldier had been sent aboard to Washington D.C.. The objective was a government official who had strategic value, and was in charge of passing on a set of blueprints that the Department was interested in seeing. It was imperative that the official did not die, and is not harmed. It is a display of strength; to show that no one is safe, nothing is sacrosanct, and that the Americans' security system was as defective as their political one. The objective was achieved, and ten days ago, the blueprints were left in a dumpster in a back alley in D.C. as planned. The blueprints were delivered to intelligence, and a team was dispatched to extract the Winter Soldier at the preordained rendezvous, and that should have been the end of that. Another tick for the Winter Soldier's record, another mission objective achieved seamlessly, flawlessly.

That was nine days ago.

They tell her that New York has a special significance for the Winter Soldier, but fail to tell her what that significance is. They tell her that the division in charge of the Winter Soldier's upkeep and maintenance are unsure as to what the effects of prolonged exposure to the outside world may be, and that he may be erratic. He may be—and here there is a delicate pause—rabid.

"And what do you do with a rabid dog?" She remarks to nobody in particular. None of the men in black laugh, but she smiles, and takes the file they proffer without another word. Inside, there are a series of pictures taken from a red light camera on 41st Street. They are blurry, but there he is—a black, hunched figure in a jacket three sizes too big, baseball cap on his head. He is not even trying to hide. There is a series of photos which are out of focus, and then there is the last one which triggered the facial recognition.

The Winter Soldier looking sideways, not into the camera but in its direction, eyes beginning to trace the height of a skyscraper. Natalia thinks, vaguely, that he looks like an old dog that has come home.

What do you do with a rabid dog?

Natalia makes a gesture, and he team of six snap to attention. She stands, the file clasped under her arm. They fall into position behind her. "Contact the embassy." She says. "Tell them to cease any and all efforts to locate him. This is not a manhunt."

You put it down.

 

*

 

Petrovitch had wanted her to be there when they found him. The Winter Soldier is a soldier, not a spy, and finding him was not projected to be a difficult mission. A gun, after all, cannot oil itself. A knife cannot keep itself sharp. Finding him would be the easy part. It is having the right person there, who would be fast enough and good enough and smart enough to make the shot—that is what Petrovitch was concerned with. Someone who can do it, but has the judgment not to if there is anything left to salvage.

Natalia supposes she should be flattered.

It is not so hard, in the end. They find his tracker, crusted with dried blood, in a back alley. His comms are found, crushed, two streets down. His weapons have been abandoned in a dumpster, and he has disposed of his armour.

They find him in Brooklyn, in an alleyway, staring up at an old, decrepit building that must have been old during the War. The night is cold around them, snow falling in white flakes, melting in her hair. He hasn’t moved in two hours.

Above them, there is the sound of laughter. The building has mostly been abandoned, two floors dank and black from the outside, the fire exits rusted and jagged. The third floor from the top, however, is lit from within. There is the sound of many people speaking at once, sitting down to dinner. She makes her way down the alley alone.

He is bare headed, and his hair is wet with snow, tucked messily behind his ears. He is staring up at the building without blinking when she nears; he doesn't even seem to register her presence.

From this close, he doesn't look very impressive. The Department's most valuable asset, wearing clothes he stole off washing lines; an old, threadbare jacket, track pants, and his tactical boots. His chest is bare under the jacket, and his lips are turning blue. He hasn't blinked.

"It's time to come home."

He jerks out of his trance. He looks sideways at her, and looks startled for a moment—as if she had caught him off guard.

"The Department wants you back, soldier." She says as gently as she can. In her pocket, she grips the Makarov tight. One shot. That's all it would take. "You've completed your mission."

The Winter Soldier does not say a thing. A crease appears in between his eyebrows, and his voice comes out very quiet, cracking with cold. "Where am I?"

Her muscles tense. She steps closer, and sense the men on the roofs with their rifles aimed at the Winter Soldier's head shift in response. She is on his right side. He blinks a few times, in quick succession, looks around, before his gaze catches on the building again. She takes one hand out of the pocket of her greatcoat, and places it on his human arm. She adopts a soft expression. "You're in New York."

He looks at her. She tries again. "My name is Natalia Romanova. I have been sent to retrieve you."

"I—" He blinks. She keeps her mouth soft, and her hand tight around the hilt of the gun. It would take her less than half a second to pull it out and shoot him in the throat, if the men on the roofs don't do it first. There might have been a struggle, if his capability was not diminished, and she may not even come out the better. But the Winter Soldier's eyes keep flickering back to the building, and his pulse is stuttering in his throat; it would be like shooting a child in his bed. His jaw tightens, and he turns back to her. Her fist clench, and she is watching him carefully, carefully, for any sign at all—for the first time, there is something behind his eyes. Something that almost looks like—like—

Even at her darkest, she had belonged to herself. Even at her lowest; beaten and bruising, bleeding and drenched in piss and sweat, shivering from the ice tank or still tremoring with the after effects of the electrodes, she had known—this body is mine. This pain is mine. This disobedience is mine, this punishment is mine. I am mine. I am mine. She had known, even then, that there will be an end to this passivity; there will be a point when nothing will happen to her body that she did not agree to. She is human, she knows this.

For the first time, she sees something behind the Winter Soldier's eyes, something that isn't trajectories or exits or vantage points or sniper angles. For the first time, she thinks—and feels it like a shock of electricity to the spinal cord: he had been a man once.

"I know you." He says, finally. "I remember you."

"You're mistaken." She says. That is impossible because they wipe him between missions, that is impossible because—

"I know you." He says stubbornly. And then—"I picked you."

—because she has never met him before.

She says, quietly, "Tranq him."

The Winter Soldier registers the shooters on the roof, even looks up in their direction, but makes no move to dodge. The tranquilizer dart hits him in the side of the neck, and his eyes are still confused even as he falls. He is still looking at her, in vague recognition: I know you. I know you.

At the last second, his gaze shifts to the flickering golden light from the apartment window. Perhaps he is dreaming. Perhaps this polished Dragunov, the Department's most valuable asset, is developing consciousness. Perhaps he is drifting into a memory from his past life. Before his eyes close, he opens his mouth as if to speak, and his human hand inches towards the building.

Natalia stands back, and lets him topple into the snow. It is almost disappointingly anticlimactic .

 

Her fingers are shaking.

He is defective. He is defective. He is a defective weapon, something went wrong during the freeze, during the wipe. They missed a neural connection, or inserted the wrong image, or targeted the wrong signals. The weapon is defective; that is why he looked at her with recognition, that is why his voice cracked when he spoke to her, when his fingers inched towards the building. The weapon is defective. The weapon is defective.

Her fingers are shaking. He is mistaken; she has never met him before. She was trained in one of the Department's bases at the hand of Ivan Petrovitch, who loves her as a daughter, alongside Yelena Belova. They were the only two recruits, the only two candidates in the Black Widow programme. When the time came for the Department to choose between them, Yelena had beaten her in single combat but Natalia had beaten her in firearms and enhanced interrogation. She has never met the Winter Soldier. She has never met the Winter Soldier.

They had laid her down on a cold metal table, and pumped penicillin into the veins in her wrists. In the screaming, burning pain after, she had emerged; new and sharp and refined to the Motherland's use. She had become her own. From that point, she belonged to herself: they did not beat her anymore—could not, if they tried. They gave her a comfortable bunker at the base, she received books and music and a small baby grand. She had a bed with an actual mattress, and access to a ballet studio every day. She belonged to herself. She belonged to herself. Every—inch—of her. Every inch of her is her own.

The weapon is defective. The weapon is defective.

She has never met him. If she did, she would have remembered. She doesn't, so she has never met him.

"Get out." She says to the other agents in the compartment. They are in a lavishly furnished car of a train, and she has been watching the Winter Soldier stare outside at the rolling French countryside for the better part of an hour, her nails digging into skin to stifle the shaking. There are red marks in her hands. "Tell them to bring tea, and get out."

The agents share looks, but they all know who she is, what she is, who she answers to. They clear out. The Winter Soldier makes no notice that anyone else is in the car. They had had to clean him up before leaving America, so's not to draw any unnecessary attention. She had watched two agents scrub him down like a dog, had forced herself to stare at the ugly mess of scarring where the metal knit into skin, the ugly contusion burning red beneath the tears in the flesh. He had sat still, staring blankly forwards. He showed minor signs of hyperthermia, and had shivered under the hot water. They freeze him between missions. His eyes had closed, as if he was sensing heat for the first time. She had left, when she saw that.

"Why did you go to New York?" She asks, now. Very slowly, the Winter Soldier turns his blank eyes away from the speeding scenery, and looks at her. "Your mission was in Washington D.C.."

"The mission is complete." He says, as if that answered the question.

"Yes." She replies. "But why were you in New York?"

"The mission is complete."

The door of their compartment slides open, and a kindly looking woman with a round face comes in. She is pushing a trolley laden with tea, cakes, jams and cookies. "Bonsoir, mademoiselle, monsieur. Comment alez-vous ce soir?"

"Bien, merci." She replies. The Winter Soldier has shifted his gaze outside again, as the woman lays out the set of tea. Tea is poured, steaming hot, into their cups. It turns tan and creamy under the milk. Natalia chatters warmly; she has an accent just north of Paris. Such a lovely evening out tonight, I do enjoy the scenery. Oh, no, I don't think we'll be out for champagne later. The Winter Soldier watches her, brows furrowed. She can't imagine he doesn't speak French, but his lips are moving like a beginner testing out the vowels.

"Le dîner sera servi à chaque fois que vous le souhaitez. Avez-vous des demandes particulières?" The woman asks, still smiling, setting out a wafer thin slice of cake on both of their plates.

"Non, ce sera tout." She says. "Merci."

The woman turns to leave.

"Steak." The Winter Soldier says suddenly. "I want a steak."

There is silence in the car. He had spoken—

The woman blinks, and then smiles.

"Of course, sir." She switches to heavily accented English, to match him.

 

He speaks English with an American accent so exact it is almost disturbing; there is a thoughtlessness in the cadence of his vowels that can't be taught, can't be programmed, can't be replaced. She can imagine his handlers stabbing furiously at buttons, trying to erase his ain'ts and his dames. She can imagine how stubbornly his subconscious held on.

He is stubborn, she finds.

The woman with the trolley comes back with two plates. Thick cut beef, salad, and a bottle of Merlot. He talks to her, this time, about nonsensical things—the weather, the other passengers, Kennedy said we'd have a man on the moon by the end of the decade, did you hear?

There is something desperate in the way the words roll out of him, as if he is afraid that he would forget how to speak, if he stopped. He had a nice voice, she decides. A fair sort of face. He almost looks alive when he speaks, and the woman leaves looking charmed and pleased. Natalia notes that she should put a bullet in his head for every word he had spoken in English. Petrovitch will ask her why she did not.

The weapon, she remembers, is defective.

She eats slowly, cutting her steak into small cubes, chewing slowly, savoring the wine. He is almost completely still, eating mechanically when he eats at all; he is trying to make the steak last. He doesn't touch the wine.

"They're gonna—" his brows furrow, trying to think of the right word. He is still speaking English. "They're gonna wipe me, aren't they?"

She adopts Laura Matthers' clean, precise accent. "I don't know."

Yes. Yes they will. They will strap you down and you will scream, and it will hurt. They will wipe out whole months, entire years, from your conscious and your subconscious, they will clean out your memories and the shadows of memories. They will wipe you, and fix you, and you will be a weapon again.

He nods, as if she has confirmed his hypothesis. "I was in Brooklyn, weren't I?"

Her fork stills. She looks up at him. Brooklyn. A few streets away from where they picked him up, she had bought a newspaper from a stand, and the man who had sold it to her had vowels as round as his, had his careless way of stringing the words together, had his quickness of speech. Brooklyn. This will have to go in the report.

"Yes." She says carefully. "Do you remember how you got there?"

"No." He replies. He looks at her. "I trained you. I picked you."

No you didn't, she bites the words back. I was trained by Ivan Petrovitch, who loves me as a father would. I was trained with Yelena Bolova. I have never met the Winter Soldier.

"You lasted four days." He says to her. "They said you would break after three. The other one did."

He is lying, a voice says in her head. He is lying. He is a defective weapon, who has realized that his expiration date is within sight, and he is trying to make her doubt her value to the Motherland, trying to turn her against her handlers. They have a very strict policy towards this kind of behavior. He is a defective weapon.

"You don't remember me." He says. "They must wipe you too."

Her fork clatters against her plate.

"Shut up." She says. She is trying very hard to keep her voice from shaking. "Shut up, right now."

What does she know about weapons, about what the Department does with weapons and agents and weapons which are agents? She knows that sometimes loose ends have to be tied up, that the best protection is ignorance, that the Winter Soldier is a weapon, and that this particular weapon is veering on defective. She knows that in this event, she should not have talked to him, and he should never have spoken back. She should have put a bullet in his head as soon as she saw him waiting under that fire escape like an old dog for a master who is never going to come home. She should have shot him, and had them remove the metal arm from his body, and left him in a dumpster, and burned the remains. A gun that does not fire is of no use. A knife with a dull edge is worthless. He is a defective weapon. He is just a scrap of metal.

"The only reason you are breathing right now," she says. "Is because I have been sent to salvage anything that may still be useful. Don't make the mistake of thinking you're not expendable. Don't make the mistake of thinking that you are—you are—"

Alive. She doesn't say it, doesn't dare think it. She very deliberately chooses not to remember that lightning strike epiphany under the fire escape, when she realized that he had been real once. Once upon a time, the Winter Soldier had a man who had laughed and smiled and cried and may even have been a child, once, pink and squawling, pulled from his mother's womb. Her nails are digging into her palm.

He turns his eyes outside, to the rolling countryside. She has lost his interest.

 

She does not sleep, that night. Outside, it is snowing again, and she sits upright in her bed, Makarov in hand, staring at the Winter Soldier's motionless form across the compartment. In three hours, they will be in Berlin. Within two days, they will be in Leningrad, and she will give her report. They will ask her if, based on her preliminary assessments, Codename Winter Soldier should be deactivated.

He has fallen into a restless sleep. After dinner, without a word, he had curled up on his side, his back to her, and closed his eyes. It is the nature of the good dog to be gentle towards his master, and fierce towards his master's enemies. He does not sleep unless the Department is nearby.

The bare slivers of moonlight find their way through the window, and below her the steady rocking of the train is a beat to which her heart pulses—to reassure her that she is still here, still alive, still hers. I was trained by Ivan Petrovitch, she repeats to herself. I was trained alongside Yelena Belova. I am the lone graduate of Project Black Widow. I am mine. I am mine. I am mine.

He murmurs in his sleep. In English, always in English; she wonders, in the decades they have had him, how no one has ever noticed that, like the man who sleeps beneath the summer moon and becomes a wolf, he always goes back to his truest form in the night, no matter what you teach him in the day.

There is a change in his breathing, and he wakes. She takes the safety off her gun.

There is a long silence. The Winter Soldier stares up into the dark. He says, very quietly, "I lived in Brooklyn, didn't I?"

She does not move. She doesn't so much as breathe.

"Do you know how they got me?" He asks. "Do you know if I—was I a defector?"

He has said enough, has done enough in these few short hours to warrant a thousand reports recommending deactivation. She should have had him shot in the alleyway, should have put a bullet in his neck herself, when she saw his hand inch towards that decrepit ruin. She should have killed him when he first said I.

She does not know how to be kind, how to be soft. How to be anything except what she is, refined for use and ready for deployment. She does not—this softness is the stuff of stories, of girls who are devoured in the woods.

"They will wipe you." She says finally. "They will wipe you, and this time it will hurt and it will last. They will put you into deep freeze, and the next time you wake up you won't remember this, or me, or anything. Until you do, and then they will wipe you again, and again, and it will hurt more. They will keep doing it until they don't need you anymore."

He nods, as if this is a situation he has contemplated many times, and has come to terms with. An undesired, if unavoidable contingency of an operation; it must be dealt with, it must be endured, it must be weathered through. It must not break you. "Yes."

"I can shoot you, if you like." She says, and her voice cracks. "I can—I will tell them that you attacked me, and I put you down out of self-defence. It will be regrettable, but they will be glad."

He is still staring at her. Under the silver light, his eyes are slightly amused, and very blue. She suddenly feels very young.

"You don't have to go back." She says, finally.

What does a machine want? What does a ghost fear, if it does not fear death?

"Do you think they would believe you?" He asks.

To hoard yourself is selfish. To live only for yourself, to live and breathe with no greater purpose—one would have to be an animal. To live without a higher purpose is not living. To live at the pleasure of oneself cannot be borne. Every life to its purpose; every death, the same. Dying when you have so much left to give—why, that is selfish too.

Her silence is all the confirmation he needs. He laughs, then. The Winter Soldier laughs lightly, genuinely amused. He has laugh lines at the corners of his eyes; whoever he had been, he must have been a man who laughed a lot, to do what knives cannot do. His laughter subsides, and he smiles at her. Her throat is tight.

"Natalia Alianovna Romanova." The Winter Soldier says softly. His Russian is perfect. She had not realized, until now, that they had been speaking English. "Would it surprise you, Natalia, if I told you that I wanted to live?"

 

*

The details of the mission report:

  1. That CODENAME WINTER SOLDIER showed no signs of resistance upon retrieval. CODENAME NR7849 thus, based on preliminary assessments, must conclude that although there was most definitely a glitch in the programming, and that groundwork on the WINTER SOLDIER'S mission parameters were faulty, there is nothing in his actions which indicated that the asset was regaining consciousness.
  2. That CODENAME WINTER SOLDIER showed no signs of aggression upon retrieval, or at any point prior to arriving at base in Leningrad. He was extracted quietly from an alley on Montague Street, Brooklyn Heights, New York, New York. He had no memory of how he came to be there, when his original mission was based in Washington D.C.. CODENAME WINTER SOLDIER does not recall evading his extraction team, or eliminating them. He does not remember missing the rendezvous, or in fact where the rendezvous was. CODENAME NR7849 is of the opinion that it was the original programming that was at fault; that CODENAME WINTER SOLDIER cannot in fact see to his own extraction or survival where programming fails, or is anything short of absolute.
  3. That CODENAME WINTER SOLDIER'S failure to reach rendezvous did not impact, in any way or form, his completion of the mission. The objective was achieved. CODENAME NR7849 stated in debriefing that the Department would be remiss in deactivating CODENAME WINTER SOLDIER without extensive and thorough diagnostics.
  4. That CODENAME WINTER SOLDIER remains the Department's most effective asset.



For these reasons, CODENAME NR7849 cannot recommend deactivation.

 

It is 1962, and there are bombs in Cuba.

Thirteen days pass, and the world releases its breath. There are speeches at universities, there are demonstrations, and—

In Leningrad Nikita Khrushchev begins his slow descent into political irrelevance. There are bombs in Cuba, and then there are no more bombs in Cuba. Petrovitch is of the opinion that—because he is privy to information not open to the general public—it was a mess that could have been avoided in the first place. He believes that the world exists on a balance of power, that there are lines that can be toed, lines that can be bombed out of existence, and lines that can never be touched. This is the latter.

He says to her, at tea, that much of the world's ills come from overreaching.

"The ego can be deadly, Natalia." He says to her. He drops a cube of sugar into his tea, and stirs. "When men—and women—forget their place in the world, when they seek to make choices which are not theirs to make—why. Wars have been fought for less."

She nods, obediently, and sips her tea. It is still too sweet, cloying on the back of her tongue.

She has given her report, her recommendations. When they had landed at base, they had been greeted by two tactical teams, guns drawn and waiting. The Winter Soldier had not reacted—not until one stupid man came forward, and tried to cuff him.

Petrovitch was very displeased by that little display.

"I am surprised." Petrovitch says now, setting down his tea. "You did not recommend deactivation at the debriefing."

She mirrors him. Her teacup clinks lightly against the saucer. "No."

Petrovitch watches her smilingly, as if he is waiting for her to elaborate. When she stays silent, he taps his index finger once, twice, on the metal chrome of the table. In the corner of the interrogation room, the door slides open, and a man comes in, carrying a file. He hands it to Petrovitch and then excuses himself.

Petrovitch flips the file open. Inside, there is the carefully typed transcript of the debriefing. Petrovitch licks his index finger, a flash of pink; incongruous in the grey pallor of his face, and flips a few pages. He reads out loud to her. "I do not in fact recommend that Codename Winter Soldier be deactivated." He peers at her over the rims of his glasses. "It is my opinion that the Winter Soldier is, and will in all likelihood remain—our most effective asset. In place of deactivation, it is my opinion that the required action is in fact a thorough review of the Winter Soldier's deployment procedure."

Petrovitch is waiting for her to speak. When she does not reply, he sets down the file. "He killed the team sent to extract him from D.C. when they followed him to the train station. Did you know that?"

"Yes."

When questioned, the Winter Soldier said he had no memory of it. They believe him because they have programmed away his ability to tell an untruth.

"If it was any other asset, he would be delivered to a furnace, not the repair room." Petrovitch says, and eyes her firmly.

"It would be a waste." She says.

"Oh, undoubtedly." Petrovitch replies. "Many years and even more money has gone into Project Winter Soldier. The arm alone—" Petrovitch sighs. "We won't get into that." There is a delicate pause. The silence is punctuated only by the sound of Petrovitch's spoon, clinking in his tea as he stirs. She is waiting for him to speak.

Petrovitch sets down the spoon, and takes a small sip. He dabs at his mouth lightly with the handkerchief, and sighs again, like a disappointed father. "The Winter Soldier is a tool. No more inclined towards judgement than a builder's hammer, or an engineer's wrench. He is an expensive tool, of course. In top condition, the best of his line. In the past we have never needed for him to make any decisions beyond which gun he would like to use. Which cartridge would get the job done best. But now… more judgement may be required."

Natalia thinks of his blank eyes. The snarl on his face when he had crushed those steel cuffs, when he had ripped through that man's throat, blood seeping into the grooves in the metal. You cannot teach him judgement. You cannot, in the end, even teach him to forget.

"The weapon may not be defective, but the weapon is becoming defunct." Petrovitch says. "If this crisis in the Caribbean has taught us anything… it's that sometimes blood have to be avoided. Sometimes a button needs to not be pressed, as it goes." And then, softly—"the world is becoming a factory. The day may soon come when we will have no need of wrenches."

There is silence for a short while. She asks, quietly, "And when that day comes?"

"We need someone with judgement at the helm." Petrovitch smiles kindly at her. "To make the decision of which cartridge would get the job done best. I am recommending you."

She feels cold. There is something cold seeping down her spine. They had stepped off the train in West Berlin to a cold, dry morning. The light had been pale and weak, and the Winter Soldier had been as white as death. On the train, the kindly French woman had spoken with the Winter Soldier for a few minutes too long, and had taken an almost motherly liking to him. She was convinced that the young American was having trouble with his French girlfriend, and when she came by the next morning, she had seen him with his gloves off.

An American with a metal hand, a woman with red hair. It would be enough for the clever man. Natalia had put two silent bullets in the woman's head while he watched. In West Berlin, the Winter Soldier did not meet her eyes once.

"He remembers me." She says suddenly, as if the words are being wrung out of her. "He—he says he knows me."

Petrovitch's hand stills on his fork. The cream cake lies, speared on the golden tips, drooping sadly. He is watching her carefully.

"He says he trained me."

"Did he?" Petrovitch tilts his head to the side. "What else did he say?"

They are going to wipe me, aren't they? Did I live in Brooklyn? How did they get me? How did they get me?

I want to live.

"Nothing much." She replies. "He wasn't exactly conducive to conversation."

Petrovitch nods, slowly. There is something roaring in her chest, some left over tremor in her fingers. "Sir." She says, and the desperation in her own voice disgusts her. "Sir, why was I chosen? Why did you choose me over Yelena?"

There is a moment. Petrovitch smiles at her, warmly, like a father might. "Because you were the best. No one could touch you."

Retrieving the Winter Soldier was her first assignment alone. For her good service, Petrovitch gives her a day off, with instructions to report at 1700 hours.

 

"I broke your jaw and dislocated your collarbone." Yelena had said. "That was after firearms though. You'll never make a sniper, but you were always a better shot."

Natalia remembers—waiting six minutes for the orchestra's crescendo, for Odile's last turn, before she could make short work of the German. In her hands, she had gripped the hilt of a NR-40, which had been holstered in her thigh. Outside, there had been a driver, and—

She wonders—

 

Why would she have to wait for the music, if they have never given her a gun?

 

 

*

 

 

They tell her later that the Winter Soldier had refused his procedure. Petrovitch says, with a little disgust, that he had bitten through his tongue, had ripped through his restraints, had killed two engineers and severely wounded a third before they could put the tranquilizer in him. He wanted to know her secret. How she had kept this rabid dog on her leash; how she had escaped with her throat intact.

 

Yelena has on a black suit, a small red star pinned at her lapel. It looks like a target. She peers at Natalia over the top of her coffee. "Petrovitch let you off again?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Huh." Yelena has a glint in her eyes; the same gleam she used to get when she had a particularly juicy bit of gossip. "They're not happy with him, I hear."

 

Natalia's spoon stills in her cup. "They?"

 

Yelena points upwards with a dainty finger; she is not talking about a divine power. Merely a higher one. "The Caribbean Crisis, they're calling it. They think the Department should have done something. They want to know why Petrovitch didn't send him."

 

She wonders if they had. She wonders if—"And do what? Kill Kennedy? That's absurd. Petrovitch wouldn't dare."

 

Yelena is watching her carefully. "Petrovitch has been daring a lot, lately. The asset evading rendezvous—tell him for me, won't you? It doesn't look good. It looks like the Department is losing control."

 

"It was a programming  error." Natalia says, by rout. It was a programming error. I do not recommend deactivation. I do not recommend deactivation. "The mission parameters weren't clear. It wouldn't happen again."

 

Yelena says, carefully, "he should hope that it doesn't. Can I speak frankly with you, Natalia?"

 

Her fingers still. There is some part of her that is pulling in, something in her that says, you should not be having this conversation. You cannot be having this conversation. You do not speak of the mission. You do not speak of the Department. You do not speak of the asset. You do not—

 

This has already gone too far.

 

"Yes." She says.

 

Yelena's eyes are ice blue, and steely. "The asset is a thing of the past. I am telling you this as a friend, and you'd do well to heed the warning. The Kremlin is moving to accelerate the Widow programme; they see now that the asset is no longer viable on a regular basis."

 

There are fifteen exits out of the restaurant. Around them, the lunch crowd from the government building chatter, about paperwork and deadlines and the borscht. Yelena's voice is low and calm, as if she is talking about the quality of the food, rather than spilling state secrets. "You will no longer be unique. You will become expendable."

 

In the silence after, Yelena looks away, her attention snipped like a string. Outside, the world is white with snow, white with decay.

 

Natalia sips at her borscht.

 

"You didn't ask about my vacation." Yelena says finally. "We had to bring Aleksander's mother. She complained the whole way. It was very tiring."

 

She remembers. Her throat is still tight. "But other than that?" She makes an attempt to pitch her voice lightly, cool and arch. A friend asking after another friend. How was your vacation? How is your husband? How is the life I will never have? "Sochi must have been lovely."

 

There is silence for a time. Natalia wonders if she has said something wrong; missed some social cue. Should she have asked about the husband? Or the mother? Yelena picks up her coffee, and Natalia sees that her fingers are shaking.

 

After a long time, Yelena says, voice almost sad: "We went to Crimea, Natalia."

 

 

 

For many to live, a few must—

 

To hoard yourself is selfish. To live and breathe with no greater purpose—one would have to be an animal. To live without a higher purpose is not living. To live at the pleasure of oneself cannot be borne. Every life to its purpose, and every death—

She has a vague memory of a story being told her. Years have passed, and features have blurred, voices have faded into the stuff of half forgotten impressions, like a message writ in water. She remembers the story, but not the storyteller.

In the story, there was a beautiful girl by the name of Marya, who was a woman fighting a perpetual war. One day, Marya met a man by the name of Ivan Tsarevitch, who was handsome and kind and strength personified. She fell in love with him, and they lived for many years together in bliss. One day, however, Marya was called to war, because lives may end and loves may end, but wars never do. Before she left, she told Ivan to never open the doors of the dungeon, for there is darkness there, and decay, and a monster waiting in the wings. Marya loved her Ivan very much. Marya would never want her Ivan to see the true depths of the world.

In another story, where there was a similar dungeon, and a similar door, and a similar order to never open it, there had been the dead bodies of twelve girls, still in their wedding whites. In this story, Ivan finds something far worse.

What would you have to become, to possess a man such as Koschei? What would you have to do to yourself, which demons would you have to foster, what horrors do you have to face, to keep the deathless man chained to your wall? Ivan was a man who loved his Marya, who loved her as a lover but also as his keeper, as his saviour and his oath. Marya was a woman who was always at war, because wars never end. A dog on a leash can be unleashed. Koschei, one may reason, can and will break free.

Ivan Petrovitch loves his country as he might a lover, a keeper, a mother, an oath. And his country is always at war. What did he find in the dungeon of the castle?

What did Ivan Petrovitch set free?

 

 

There are patches in her memory.

 

That night, she lies awake in her bunker, back ramrod straight against the hard mattress, counting her pulse. There are patches in her memory. There are patches in her memory.

 

She remembers every car she walked by that morning to get to the restaurant, every number plate, every tram line. Every street sign, every one of the Department's agents sent to trail her. Every building on every road, the trajectories from each vantage point you need to take out a moving target. She remembers every face she walked by, but what did she have for breakfast, the day they sent her after the Winter Soldier? How long did she spend in the ballet studio, the day before that?

 

Logically, she knows—eggs and crepes. Three hours, at minimum. But knowing is not remembering, and she—

 

Knowing is not remembering. Knowing is not remembering and she cannot assume that she had eggs and crepes for breakfast based on the knowledge that eggs and crepes are the only breakfasts served. Circular logic is in itself flawed. When possible, the Department teaches, always draw a straight line. A to B, beginning to end, objective to completion and asset to extraction. Knowing is not remembering, and—

 

This is what she knows.

 

That the Winter Soldier is an asset who is wiped as clean as a whistle in between missions to ensure the least amount of unforeseeable risks.

 

That the Department has means through which memory can be wiped; that the Department is capable of wiping even the memory of being wiped.

 

That the Winter Soldier has patches in his memory; he does not remember making the decision to evade his extraction team, and he does not remember finding them waiting for him at a secluded part of the train station. He does not remember tearing out the first man's trachea, or breaking the second's spine, or strangling the third. He does not remember putting a bullet between the fourth's C3 and C4, and he does not remember placing the blade of a NR-40 against the fifth's throat, and ripping. It is as if he blinked, and found himself standing at the apartment in Brooklyn.

 

"I am mine." She says out loud, knowing there are bugs in her room. "This body is mine. I am mine. I am mine."

 

Later, when she refuses the food sent to her door, when she pours the water on the ground and shatters the plate against the wall, Petrovitch sends a team. She takes a bullet to the shoulder, and another to the thigh. More to the point, she takes down six men of the eight before the ninth (unseen and unaccounted for, from an unknown vantage point) hits her with a tranq.

 

She wakes up in a vault, strapped to a chair.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Reprogramming the human mind is a delicate and complex matter. Much has been made of the Department's scientific endeavors in the years immediately following the war, less has been made of ethical concerns. Detractors in the future will tend to forget that there is nothing unique about Project Winter Soldier, about forming the perfect tool in order to create the perfect state. Aleksander Lukin and Ivan Petrovitch were inspired, like millions of others, by the American they call Captain. To form a more perfect union, we the people understand that sacrifices must be made. For many to live, a few must—

 

Justice. Order. Liberty of self, to escape from the constraints of a world preordained, to be free not for freedom's sake, but for tomorrow's sake. To be free from the constraints of your birth, to make ideology into fact. Detractors say that Project Winter Soldier and Project Black Widow are contraventions of the Geneva Convention, that these are war crimes, that it is an affront to human dignity.

 

Was not the great Captain America himself programmed? Petrovitch asks, in conversation. Was he not a creature of his world, was he not raised on fairytales and the stuff of dreams, growing up as he did on streets where men and women died for want of assistance, where children starved through the winter, where the mansions of the Vanderbilts grew side by side with city slums, where billion dollar steel giants made decisions for millions, sitting at oysters and cigars with politicians in suits? Would the great Steve Rogers, Petrovitch asks, have become what he became if he had not been taught that his country was exceptional, that there is black and there is white, and that America is white every, every time?

 

You may even argue, Petrovitch says lightly, that what was done to him is crueller than anything we could have ever devised. That though we have dirtied our hands, though we have wiped thought and memory and torn girls apart from inside out, though we have made a man into a war crime, what was done to Steve Rogers was done at birth, and before birth, stretching back generation to generation, was done to his father and his father before him, all the way back to one Irish immigrant, who saw a world that could birth him anew. Dreams are cruel things. You may argue that we have taken away the asset's freedom. You may also argue that Steve Rogers never had a freedom to be taken away in the first place. On the facts, then, who is the monster?

 

The machine that wipes the man, the man who presses the button, or the idea encased in ink that shows us a glorified lie?

 

So you see, Petrovitch says, satisfied with this neat turn of phrase. The truth is a matter of circumstance. It isn't all things to all people all the time.

 

And neither, Petrovitch says, the look on his face faintly regretful as he motions for the machine to start up, are you.

 

 

 

 

The Opéra national de Paris was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV to improve the quality of the dancers at court. As such, it is the oldest ballet institution in the world, and many such modern institutions trace their origin to this company.

 

In 1965, three years after Natalia Alianovna Romanova (Codename NR7849) broke protocol and was subsequently disciplined, the Opéra national de Paris holds an open call; they are looking for a volley of new faces, and are eager to cultivate talent spotted too late for their school. They will be taking two dancers; three if exceptional talent is exhibited.

 

In 1962, Natalia Romanova broke protocol, and the Winter Soldier laughed for the first time in almost twenty years. Neither of them are deactivated, but the Winter Soldier is given a complete wipe, with reports upon reports coming to the conclusion that he is never to be let on U.S. soil ever again. He is given the memory of training Natalia Alianovna Romanova over the course of months and then years instead of a torture session and a grapple in the boxing ring, to explain why he remembers the effect of silver on red hair, rolling tracks beneath a lightly jolting carriage, the unfamiliar taste of charred and bloody meat. Before he was wiped, he gave a complete mission report of what Codename NR7849 had said to him. The ensuing analysis states that the scientists believe it is the offer to shoot him that made the memory impossible to wipe.

 

In 1965, the Department receives its second batch of recruits for the Black Widow programme, and Natalia Alianovna Romanova's name is wiped completely from the records. In 1965, the Opéra national de Paris holds its open call.

 

In 1965, Natalia Alianovna Romanova ceases to exist. In 1965, Nadine Roman performs Act III of Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, executing 32  fouettés en tournant at the casting call. She is accepted into the company unanimously by the three judges. One of them, in passing, notes that they have a prima ballerina in the making.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am on [tumblr](http://www.ilvalentinos.tumblr.com).


	4. Part III: Rothbart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In a company of etoiles, the distinguishing factor between a prima ballerina and a prima ballerina assoluta is that one has no convictions against using one's body beyond the confines of one's art.

_Ere Babylon was dust,_

_The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child,_

_Met his own image walking in the garden._

_That apparition, sole of men, he saw._

_For know there are two worlds of life and death:_

_One that which thou beholdest, but the other_

_Is underneath the grave, where do inhabit_

_The shadows of all forms that think and live_

_Till death unite them and they part no more…_

_—_ Percy B. Shelley, _Prometheus Unbound_

 

 

 

There is a little café, a hole in the wall on a side street off the Rue Chevalier de Saint-George only a fifteen minute walk from the Palais Garnier which serves Nadine's favourite coffee in all of Paris. The day they announce the audition dates for the season, she is having lunch with Isabelle.

Isabelle sits opposite from her, sipping at her chocolate, which they allow themselves on each Friday of every week. "What do you think of him? The new director?" 

Nadine picks up one of the complimentary chocolates and places it on the tip of her tongue. Outside, it is raining. Soon rehearsals will begin in earnest. She turns back to Isabelle. "Why? Are you going to fuck him?"

Isabelle's mouth purses. Nadine grins.

"All the others will be lining up outside his door now." Isabelle looks uncomfortable. Nadine presses on. "He'll have his pick of the bunch, and you know the auditions take place before we even put on our shoes—"

"Nadine." Isabelle hisses. Nadine forgets, sometimes, that Isabelle hasn’t always been in this business. Her father being a professor, Isabelle had always had the charming notion that success depends solely on the content between one’s ears instead of some other part of the anatomy. Nadine hasn’t the heart to say: darling, even in academia that is not strictly true. “Jesus Christ, Nadine.”

Nadine pops her lips around the chocolate, gazing thoughtfully into the distance.

"Do you want to dance Odette?"

"I don't want to dance a cygnet again, if that's what you mean." She replies lightly.

"But you don't want to dance Odette."

"I have time." She replies. She is 22, and she has been with the Company for three years. The problems that plague the others do not bother her—contusions on her feet last no more than two days, fractures a week at the most when she wrings her bones back into place. At night, she sleeps as soundly as a baby, and she has never heard the crack of her hips. There are others in the company—Sophie, for one. Ynes, for another, who are nearing thirty. They have this season, and that is it. Time is a cruel mistress.

She does not tell Isabelle that she has no interest in dancing a role that has been danced a thousand times before, and will be danced a thousand times after. That she has no personal objections towards fucking Claude Bullion for the role—in a company of etoiles, after all, the distinguishing factor between a prima ballerina and a prima ballerina assoluta is that one has no convictions against using one's body beyond the confines of one's art. She has no objections towards doing what must be done, but—she thinks, with something like muscle memory, that now is not the time. She does not know how she knows this, but she knows this is true.

"Do you think Luc would mind?" Isabelle asks her, peering sideways.  

Nadine looks at her carefully. "He'd understand."

It is an old trick, spreading your legs. Their last artistic director had preferred men, and Luc had told her it was surprisingly enjoyable. She had not minded, when he had been given the male lead in _Giselle_. In his position, she might have done the same.

"What _do_ you want to dance?" Isabelle asks, finally.

Nadine shrugs, the wide collar of her sweater slipping off one milk-pale shoulder. She catches the eye of an elegant businessman smoking across the café, notes the fine cut lines of his suit, and smiles.  

 

 

She has a small apartment on the Rue des Dames, a twenty minute walk away. It is pale, and clean, and in the mornings she has better light than anyone else in the building. Her neighbours are old, and often bake more bread than they can eat, so she gets her fair share of free meals. She likes the illusion of affluence the building gives with its pre-war façade, the elaborate stone lining the doors. There is even a doorman—a round, jovial man named Jean who tells her that she reminds him of his daughter, away studying in London.

Today, Jean is not at the door.

"Hello," she says, approaching the unfamiliar figure carefully.

"Mademoiselle," the man replies, and docks his hat. He has an accent just north of Paris. She tilts her head at him.

"Where's Jean?" She asks.

"He had to take a leave of absence," the man replies. "I am Gabriel."

"I see." She says. She eyes Gabriel carefully—he is younger than the usual fare; bland looking, almost unusually so. She has a feeling that she will forget his face as soon as she reaches the elevator, and will not remember him again until the next morning when she leaves for rehearsal; undoubtedly she will forget again by the time she arrives. In any case, she smiles, wishes him good day, and goes on to her apartment.

In the corner of the small space deemed her living room, there is a gramophone on a stand. Some of the other girls are high up enough in the company to be able to afford a television, but she is not one of them. She has instead a bookshelf of records, stashed in between thick volumes of dance and music theory. She has no couch, only a wide armchair, and the rest of the living room is filled with a set of out folding mirrors. Now, she puts her Tchaikovsky on the gramophone and her pointe shoes on her feet, and begins to stretch.

It is a good burn. Clean, crisp. She watches the sinewy muscles of her thighs pull and stretch, watches the own lines of her body—tighter ever year, longer every year, stronger, always—extend in the reflected surface.

What does she want to dance?

She supposes—

She supposes she should want to dance Odette. She should want those feathers trailing from her shoulders, the crowd screaming her name as she spins. The thunderous applause after, the roses falling at her feet even as the bandages around her toes soak through with blood. On a whim, she stands, falling into second position, and stretches her arms out wide for an imaginary audience, their calls echoing in her ears.

She imagines the beat of the grand waltz in the third act, imagines being lifted by the waist. She imagines a quirk of her foot, imagines the flourish she would give, a more playful Odette, a less stylized Odile. A triumphant turn.

In 1895—

She stills. In 1895. In 1895? What happened in 1895?

Pierina Legnani performed in St Petersburg. Why did she think of this? A scrap of memory, a scrap of textbook history pulled out of thin air, and Nadine does so despise history. She prefers theory, and practice. History does nothing for no one.

So much better just to start anew.

 

 

Two years ago Claude Bullion worked as the assistant director at the American Ballet Company in New York. On a cold evening in November, he had wandered the streets, his fingers tapping against his side to spell out the beat. He was trying to choreograph the last few bars, and the music—the music was fighting him that night.

And then, suddenly—the music wasn’t in his head anymore.

Claude Bullion wandered into a café, where there was a woman on the stage with a violin. Tchaikovsky, but _bereft_. The way this strain shouldn't be. A triumph in that curious place of transition as it became a dirge.

Claude Bullion tells this story with a faraway look in his eyes, pacing the studio. Around him, the twenty ballerinas listen, rapt. Isabelle, leg braced on the barre behind her, is fiddling with a strand of her hair that has fallen from the bun at the back of her head, the auburn curl twisted around her index finger.

"And I thought," Bullion says. "A classic is a classic, but time is not unmoving. Classics must change."

Nadine is not listening. Her gaze flickers from Ynes, to Clara, Louisa. Yes, yes, yes. If she was a betting woman, then she would put down her month's rent that Bullion has already slept with half of the girls assembled.

"For all their faults," Bullion carries on. "Americans are forward thinking; there is no obsession with the past, no conviction that yesterday is intrinsically better than tomorrow. Look forward, they say, and I intend to."

He passes by Isabelle, and she turns her face.

 _Ah_ , Nadine thinks.

Afterwards, when the date for the audition has been announced, Bullion asks her to stay behind.

She takes her time, one foot in front of another, feet flat, half way to flight. One finger drawn across the top of the barre that lines the wall, while she turns her hips just so, watching him speak quietly to the pianist from beneath her lashes.

"Monsieur Bullion," she says, when he turns his attention to her.

"Mademoiselle Roman." He replies, smiling. He is a handsome enough man, if on the short side; thin and elegantly crafted, blond hair carefully parted. He looks like the sort of man to write pages upon pages of terza rima while coughing gently into a lace handkerchief.

Behind him, the pianist’s attention entirely focused on the sheets in front of him. Bullion smiles. "I've been watching you."

She lifts an eyebrow, half in surprise, and half in careful pleasure. "Have you, monsieur?"

"I have." He replies. "You are one of our strongest dancers, Mademoiselle Roman. I saw your Pas de Deux with Luc once—I thought it was masterful."

"Thank you."

"But you have no interest in dancing Odette."

Her finger stills on the barre. Out of the corner of her eyes, she notices that the pianist is listening, his interest piqued.

There is a silence. Her arms spread on the barre behind her, bracing herself as she meets Bullion's eyes. “I don’t know what you want me to say, monsieur.”

They hold each other’s gaze. Bullion’s eyes are dark, the pupils barely separated from the iris. He turns and snaps his fingers at the silent pianist. “The Odile coda.”

There is a second, and the silent pianist looks up. He is younger than she expected, with a face that belongs in a black-and-white film reel. “You can’t expect her to dance that,” he replies. “Not off the cuff.”

“The _coda_ , Michel.”

Michel pins Bullion with a look, eyebrows slightly raised, before he turns back to his sheets. He flips through them, before he settles in. Bullion, leaning against the piano, lifts his hand: three middle digits up, and then two.

Thirty two. She tilts her head at him.

“Do your best, Nadine.” He says. “I don’t expect it to be perfect. Not off the cuff.”

She allows herself only a split second of indignation that splits her bones, lights her insides aflame, and another longer second to note that the pianist’s accompaniment on the left is too heavy, before the pointe of her shoe hits the ground.

She knows these steps, knows these steps like muscle memory, like someone has carefully drilled this knowledge into her bones. She is not the first to dance this dance; a thousand ballerinas and a hundred primas and maybe a dozen greats have danced this exact step, have twirled so and twisted like this, have leapt as if wings sprouted from their backs. Legnani, Pavlova, Markhova, Alonso. She is only the latest, in a great chain, a rung in the history of this dance.

The beat comes, and she begins to turn.

Thirty two. Her thighs are beginning to burn, but it is a good burn, a low steady thrum in the core of her flesh. One. I am seducing the prince. Two. He is watching a girl not his beloved. Three. I am seducing the prince. Four. He is seduced.

Five. Nadine bites the inside of her cheek. Six. Ten. Thirteen.

Sixteen. Odile, Odette. Odile Odette Odile Odette—

Eighteen. Odette is doomed in every version of this story, except one.

Twenty two. In one version, she lives happily ever after, the curtain falls and she is saved, and her prince lives, and they are happy.

Twenty five. In another, she dies in a lake, and her prince jumps in after her.

Twenty seven. In another, her prince is killed, and she is left with a corpse.

Twenty nine. One, out of three, is so very slim a chance.  

Thirty. Thirty one. Thirty two.

The music stops. She falls into third position.

Claude Bullion is smiling, matching her tooth for tooth now. Very slowly, he begins to clap.

He turns to the pianist. "What do you think, Michel?"

She follows his gaze, looking at the pianist. His right hand taps silently on the piano keys. "She’d be better with a few months rehearsal."

She turns her eyes, very deliberately, back to Bullion.

"I have to say," Bullion says then. "I'm not used to such a disappointing lack of ambition."

He doesn't want a reply.

"Dancers want to dance." Bullion says. "Dancers want to dance the lead. They want to open. They want their names in the headlines, they want roses on the stage and standing ovation. It's why companies like these exist. It's why this theatre—" he gestures, at the vast expanse of the studio, as if to encompass everything from the Palais itself to the vast scope of that ambition that he finds lacking in her. "Exists. Why are you here, Nadine, if not to be the best?"

She wonders if there is a polite way of saying: _I am not going to fuck you for the role_.

"I'm not ready." She says instead. "In a year, maybe. But right now, I'm not ready. And that's the truth."

On stage, on good days, she can anticipate each beat of the snare drum and each pull of the bow before it happens. On the best days, she can feel it in her blood; the rises, the falls, the glissandos, the thrumming vibrato as the orchestra below coax a rising tide of quivering wavelength from thirty finely tuned instruments. You have to feel it in your bones, beating along your nerves; otherwise there is no point in putting on your shoes that morning, no point in getting out of bed. Your body has to sing.

Timing. It's all about timing.

Bullion's little moue of a mouth tells her that he is not pleased. He turns without another word and makes his way to the pianist.

"Now, Michel, I know I've spoken to you about the refrain on this page here…"

She picks up her bag and goes.

 

 

She doesn't go to the audition. Instead, she stays home, reads a book on modern theory, and ambles down to the café down the road at nightfall for a glass of wine. She goes home with a stranger who talks with his hands, eyes lighting up when she brings up American poetry. He's a transfer from Los Angeles, and the idea of playing his French intrigue is appealing to her in its novelty.

Two days later, the list goes up. She is vaguely impressed and very amused when she reads that Isabelle has landed the part of Odette/Odile. And underneath, in crisp black letters—

_Understudy: Nadine Roman._

 

 

*

 

 

"Hey, gorgeous." She grins when Isabelle steps through the door of her dressing room, perched on the couch in the corner—a positive luxury—one leg thrown up over the armrest. "Or should I say, Swan Queen."

Isabelle rolls her eyes, but that smile is genuine, and that smile is real, and lights up her whole face. "Get off the couch, Nadine."

She shifts, but doesn't rise. "You took my advice?"

Isabelle seats herself at the vanity, the garish bulbs turning her skin yellow. Her hair is burnished; it looks, for a second, as red as Nadine's own. "You gave me advice?"

She narrows her eyes in faux offence. "Don't play coy with me, you little minx—" Isabelle laughs, leans back when Nadine surges forward, hands on the table on either side of Isabelle's shoulders. "How was he? Was he good?"

"He was—" Isabelle stops, and shifts her gaze. "I didn't. You know. I didn't sleep with him."

She lifts an eyebrow. "Did you dazzle him with your wit?"

"I told him I would. After the season. Not in so many words but—he understands." Isabelle looks up at her, eyes half glazed. "Marie-Louise said that she saw Ynes coming out of his office one night, and everyone knows that Clara has—I haven't. Not yet."

"Huh," she says instead, settling back. She is wearing her leotard, a black lace shawl draped across her shoulders. She has chipped a nail on her right foot, and now her toe is bleeding, dangling off the arm of Isabelle's couch. She shifts, and without knowing why, she lets the shawl fall further off her shoulders. Isabelle turns back to the mirror, and begins to take off her makeup.

"You didn't even go to the audition." Isabelle says, accusing.

"Oh, I auditioned." Isabelle turns, and she laughs. "I danced! For God's sake, I danced, after his little speech. I think he wanted another scratch on his bedpost, but I _just_ danced. He didn't like what I had to offer."

"Oh." Isabelle looks down at the wet tissue in her hands. "You're very good, though. You're—the part should be yours." She looks up, eyes bright. "You should be dancing Odette."

"If you're not careful in rehearsal, I still might." Without warning, she leans forward, and picks up Isabelle's foot, ignoring her bleat of protest. She turns it a little to the side, and Isabelle draws in a sharp breath. "I saw you twist your foot. You should have gone to medical."

"I'm fine."

"Isabelle."

She looks up. Isabelle's cheeks are flushed, a little mascara smeared around her right eye. Her voice softens. She reaches forward and takes the tissue out of Isabelle’s hand. Her voice is low as she wipes the black away from under Isabelle’s eye. The skin feels very delicate, there, the curve of the eye, the hollow beneath the rise of brow.

"You should have gone to medical."

She carries on wiping the makeup from her face. She watches Isabelle watch her.

 

 

Claude Bullion wants to tell the story stripped of its pilgrim Aesop. He wants no whores, no Madonnas, no gullible princes corrupted by the call of the flesh. He wants it stripped. He wants it to sing.

Odette is Odile is the White Swan is the Black Swan, is the princess, is Rothbart's daughter. Rothbart himself—Bullion has devised a new opening, where Rothbart, like the swan, is comprised of two forms. One: the Duke von Rothbart, who is young and handsome—"vigorous!" Bullion snaps on the first day—and two: Rothbart the villain; scaled, feathered, and horned. It is the monster, though, and not the Duke, who seduces Odette in the opening act.

Nadine spends her days pretending to be Isabelle; shadowing her steps, learning her mannerisms.

It is the pianist who catches her eye.

She has seen men caught up in the strains, or engrossed by the rise and fall. She has seen them playing, eyes closed, eyes scanning two pages ahead, eyes glazed over with the call of the music. Never awake. Never alert. Always half asleep. This one stares straight ahead, and does not blink even once.

One of the girls tell her that he is a graduate from the Conservatoire that Bullion poached straight after graduation. He doesn't talk much. He nods when Bullion clicks his fingers at him, plays when he is told. After that first day, the tone of dispassionate boredom in his voice never made a second appearance. If he smiled, Nadine thinks, he could be very handsome.

"Hey." She says to him, leaning against the piano, during break. In the far corner of the studio, Isabelle is wiping away the sweat beading on her forehead, speaking urgently to Bullion.

He glances up at her. His fingers still on the piano keys. "Hello."

She tilts her head at him. "I'm Nadine."

His eyes flicker and catch on the fire escape. "Michel."

"Bullion has a penchant for cradle robbing, I see." She pops her hip against the piano and watches his eyes follow the movement. There is something—"I have a friend who went to the Conservatoire."

“You do?” There is that dispassionate boredom again. Nadine didn’t know she was waiting for it until it made an appearance. She lifts an eyebrow at him. Her silence, she has been told, is an unnerving thing. Most people tend to break at three seconds.

Michel looks at her again, gaze contemplative. A line appears between his eyebrows, before his gaze drops. From this angle, the pull of his cheeks look like he is smiling.

A theatre near the Conservatoire used to show American movies every weekend, and Nadine knows her fair share of would-be Deans and Brandos and Gables. She wonders if Michel had been one of them.

His shoulders drop. He leans forward. "You asking around about me?" 

She smiles, pleasantly surprised. She hadn't—she hadn't expected that. She doesn't know what she expected, but it isn't this. His left arm lies lazily on the ledge of the piano, a shit eating grin spreading slowly on his face. That sense of black-and-white celluloid whimsy heightens. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Isabelle approach.

"Nadine, Claude said that—" She stops, looking between her and Michel, back and forth. "Claude has something to say. About the prologue."

She doesn't break his gaze. "Isabelle, this is Michel. His accompaniment is too heavy on the left."

He lifts an eyebrow. "You noticed that? Wrist problem." He extends his hand to Isabelle. "Enchante."

Isabelle blushes. "Pleasure. Nadine—"

"Coming." She says, and follows her.

Halfway across the studio, she turns her head, and watches as Michel looks away, back to his sheet music. His spine straightens, that cocky nonchalance gone as suddenly as if someone had called ‘ _cut’_.

 

 

Against her judgement, she does ask around about him.

“Bullion’s lapdog,” Luc tells her one night, lying in her bed. He pulls his cigarette case out of the trousers he has slung over the foot of her bed, despite the fact that she has told him, once or twice or a hundred times how much she hates the smell. “He’s been with him since, shit, must be at least two years. Some of the guys think they’re fucking.”

“Huh.” She says. “Did you know him at the Conservatoire?”

“By reputation.” Luc grimaces. He strikes a match, and the tip of the cigarette burns a dull orange. “A hell of an asshole, apparently. Hardly ever showed up to lectures, but ranked in the top five at graduation.”

“He has to be good for Bullion to poach him. You don’t get to be assistant to the artistic director of the Opéranational on mediocrity.”

“No, you get it by sucking cock.” Luc chortles. He puffs out the smoke in a series of rings, and makes a pleased noise.

“You think it’s true?”

Luc shrugs. “We’ve all done it.”

Nadine considers this. Maybe this is true; it would explain that strange docility, that obedient silence. She thought of his heavy shoulders and the barrel chest that he tries in vain to hide under those unassuming sweaters. Claude Bullion, in comparison, is much more the picture of a man who spends his days contemplating the application of adagio or adagietto; elegant and small and probably asthmatic. Michel looks like a prize-fighter. She wonders how Bullion managed to acquire that particular hound.

A moment, and then she says, “Put that out.”

 

 

They tell her about the secretary's daughter, the day before opening night.

She's nine, and they tell Nadine that she is quite the little prodigy. When her father had been invited to Leningrad, she had gone to every show of the Bolshoi's; she likes _Giselle_ , and _Sleeping Beauty_ , but her favourite is _Swan Lake_. She knows the entire coda off by heart, can play the suite on three different instruments with aplomb, and she will be in the private box to the left of the stage. There will be eight bodyguards with her, and they will sweep the building before then. Don't be alarmed. It's standard procedure.

She gets to the studio earlier than usual, and finds Michel seated at the piano already. She stands, silent, at the door, and watches him.

He hasn't noticed her—or if he has, he is choosing not to acknowledge her. He is staring down very intently at the keys. The bones of his fingers in his right hand are thin, and long; a pianist's hands. He spreads out his fingers, and taps a key.

It comes out ringing and sweet. A major key, not the minor she has gotten used to. Another—until he is tapping out a melody on the right side, cheerful and bombastic, a song you'd sing in a bar.

He doesn't use his left hand. His right hand plays, and the song keeps coming, merry and bold. He closes his eyes, and—

With a jarring, dissonant note, the song cuts off.

"Practice doesn't start for another hour." He says, without looking up.

"We get here early to warm up." She drops her bag at the door, and saunters inside. His right hand is still resting on the keys.

"Forgot the rest?" She asks.

At this, he settles his hand in his lap, and turns to face her.

He might have been a dancer. That would explain—"Play the rest."

He doesn't move. There's something settling at the back of her head, a prickling of the flesh, the hairs standing on end. Her throat feels dry. He stares back at her, impassive. "Play the rest."

In 1895—

In 1895, what? What happened in 1895? In 1895—

The sound of footsteps and laughter in the distance, coming down the hall breaks her attention. She starts back, as if she has been shocked.  She has only just reached the other end of the room, picking up her bag, when the other girls step through into the room. By this time, Michel is shuffling through his sheet music, the fingers of his left hand tapping on the piano ledge, spelling out the beat.

 

 

When the curtain falls on Odette's grief, the crowds outside packed into the seats of the Palace Garnier go up like a flame.

The applause is ringing in her ears, and she watches roses fall at Isabelle's feet, watches her flushed with victory as she does bow after bow, and there is something in her throat, like pride, like glory. She wants to—

"An astonishing turn." Bullion says, behind her. He sounds choked up too. "Stunning. Stunning. The critics—"

"You were wonderful." She says to Isabelle when she comes off the stage at last. Her eyes are wet, a bouquet of roses held in her arms. Nadine pulls her close, turns her head into Isabelle's throat; she smells like sweat and perfume, like powder and the starch of her bodice. "Wonderful. I can't imagine—you were _wonderful_."

Isabelle looks at her, grinning, and then surges forward, planting a kiss on both of her cheeks. "Nadine, I—"

"The secretary's daughter wants to meet you." Bullion comes back to say, hand on the small of Isabelle's waist as he begins to guide her away. "Now, I want you to make her very welcome…"

She gives Isabelle's hand a reassuring squeeze, and watches her leave. There is a spring in her step now, the heel arched off the wooden floor. Nadine's eyes follow the flowing muscles upwards. She watches the curve of the calf, the strained lines of the thighs, each ligament connecting bone to bone—

"She was good." A voice says, and Nadine shakes herself. Michel is standing behind her, watching Isabelle leave. There is something considering in his eyes, and she wonders if that had been what she'd looked like. His eyes switch to hers. "She missed a beat about eight minutes in, though. Did you see it?"

She had. A falter. A split second too late. She straightens her spine instead. "It's opening night. We're all nervous."

"Not you." He says. When she had been younger, her father liked to hunt. Between seasons, to keep his trigger finger nimble and aim precise, he used to take Nadine to the shooting range. There had been a rifle he favoured there, a Mosin-Nagant. The bullets had been grey, and under that flickering light they looked blue. Michel has eyes that colour; that same quality of steel. "You didn't miss the beat. When you danced the coda."

She blinks at him. "Are you flirting with me?"

He looks back at her. For a second he looks as confused as she must look, before his heavy-lidded eyes blink slowly. “Do you want me to be?”

She is close enough to see the red flushing his neck, despite the look on his face that suggests he has said dirtier things to prettier girls. It’s as a game of chicken as any she’s engaged in, and Nadine does not like to lose.

She smiles and steps forward. "Look at you," she purrs, low. "Didn't know you had it in you."

He opens his mouth. He closes it. She grins.

"I don't—" He gazes skywards. "I only meant to say, you didn't miss the beat, when you danced this Act. You wouldn't have. You could be dancing Odette."

She eases back, shrugging a shoulder. "Isabelle got the role fair and square. And besides—" She gestures. The two of them have their heads bent together, and now she turns hers, indicates where outside, beyond the red velvet curtains, the crowds are still buzzing. Inside, cleaners sweep the roses from the stage. "I couldn't have done that. Electrified them."

"Couldn't you?" Michel asks, seriously.

She has an impression, suddenly, of a Monet she had seen a long time ago: a woman standing in an open field, a parasol held over her head. She is turning back, but the movement is swift, and so in that split second she is rendered faceless. Nadine's eyes catch at the neat knot of the tie at his throat, smooth over the clean lines of his suit, donned for tonight. That seems familiar.

"Not everyone is capable of it." She says. "Letting themselves go."

The corners of Michel's mouth crease thoughtfully, and he eases back. Behind them, there is a call—the intermission is over.

He steps away first, to make sure the conductor has the pages he needs. She watches him go, watches the stage-lights bring out strands of auburn in his carefully tamed hair and cast wide swaths of shadow over the hard planes of his mobile face.

She thinks, suddenly, of snow. She thinks of feet planted in white mounds, of a face turned up towards the light.

 

 

The little girl has a graceful arch to her neck, and very little childhood chubbiness. Nadine sees her from the side of the stage, where she is standing in position to lead the cygnets. One of the girls had murmured in aside to another, "a communist's daughter in the Palais."

She has dark eyes, thoughtfully downcast, framed by darker lashes. The burnishing gold of the stage lights, alternating with the darkness of the crowds, flicker over her neat chignon and cast strange shadows over her serious little face. In the flickering light, her fine brown skin looks like bronze; the solemn firm lines of the little mouth is shadowed and dark, a pondering Caravaggio looking down as Isabelle spins across the stage.

Afterwards, tiredly untying the ribbons from her feet, Isabelle says, "Her father doesn't approve."

"Mmm?" Nadine hums, a little crease appearing between her eyebrows as she applies lip liner to the cupid's bow of her pursed mouth. "Do fathers approve of anything ever?"

Isabelle smiles at her.

After a while Isabelle says, casual, "You and Michel seem to be getting close.” And then: “Should Luc be worried?”

Nadine applies a fresh coat of mascara, and snorts.

“Is that a yes?”

“It most certainly is not.” She lifts an eyebrow. “Do you like him?”

“Luc?” Isabelle’s brows furrow. “Of course not. No.”

Nadine grins. “Michel. Do you like him?”

Pink rises in Isabelle’s cheeks, and she turns back to the mirror. “He’s—he’s unsettling. He’s… strange.”

“He’s always been that way, Luc said.” Nadine replies. “He’s probably not used to speaking with women who don’t live in the Louvre.”

Isabelle’s eyes drop to her lap, and she picks at a nail. “He’s comfortable with you, though. He seems—I don’t know. It seems like he likes you.”

“A lot of people do.” Nadine says airily, and Isabelle smiles, again, before her expression grows troubled. “What is it?”

“I think he—might have said something to Claude.” A moment. “Did you see me miss the beat?”

Nadine rolls her eyes. "Oh God, not you too."

"What do you mean, me too?" The colour drains from her face. "Did Bullion—"

"No. Michel."

Isabelle's eyes close. "Jesus Christ," she breathes, sitting down hard. One hand coming up to her eyes, one hand which is—Nadine doesn't understand how she hadn't seen it before—shaking. "Jesus goddamned Christ."

"Hey." She moves forward. "It's one beat. Issy, it's one—"

"It's not one beat. It's—months of work gone to—"

"It's opening _night_." She grips her hands. "It's opening _night_. Everyone's nervous. There are girls who—who screw up and get dropped on their faces. You've seen it happen. One beat, noticed by me and who—the director's lapdog. It doesn't matter. You'll do better next time. And by the season's end, you'll be the premier. I promise you."

After a moment, when Isabelle's breathing has calmed, she looks up. Not at her, but through her. "I can't mess this up. You know that, don't you? You know I can't mess this up."

 _No, you can't_ is the swift, answering thought. For a moment her vision shakes, and she feels the thought in her veins, beating along her blood— _no you can't, no you can't, no you_ —reverberating at the pit of her stomach. You can't, you can't, you can't.

"You won't." Nadine says. In her head, it sounds like a threat. It comes like as a promise.

 

 

"She looks like she's having fun."

"Shows what you know about women," she says, without taking her eyes from where Isabelle is being crowded into the plush dark seat of the booth, Bullion leaning in too close for comfort. There is something forced about Isabelle's laugh. She turns her head, watches as Michel's eyebrows quirk as if to say _touché_.

"You don't think she's having fun?" He asks, voice serious.

"You think she is?" She counters. She sips her champagne. He brings his tumbler to his mouth, and she watches the smoke curl lazily from the cigarette he has held between his index and middle digits. He watches them carefully, eyes slightly narrowed, like a man trying to puzzle out some game he doesn't quite get.

"There are some urgent notes I can share with him about the third chair violinist." He offers. She considers it.

"Don't." She replies, turning back to the bar. She drains her glass, and gestures to the bartender for another. It's not on her bill. "When the director is speaking with his lead ballerina, lapdogs do not jump in yapping."

She thinks she sees his mouth curve as he turns, a half-second of a smile that is swallowed up suddenly by the darkness between the hanging lights as he leans on his elbows against the bar. “What did you say you specialized in?”

He drains his glass and motions for another just as the bartender passes her a flute of champagne. “I didn’t.”

“You’re terrible at small talk.”

“It’s not my specialty.” Despite herself, she laughs. He quirks a small, pleased smile. “Russian. Turn of the century. My final thesis was an opera in the style of Rachmaninoff.”

“You wrote an opera?” He stubs out his cigarette on the ashtray and reaches for another from the breast pocket of his woollen suit jacket. The refill, when it comes, is amber-coloured and American. “What was it about?”

He glances sideways at her. Under the dim lights, the flickering flame of his Zippo throws shadows up his hollow cheeks. “Why do you ask?”

“This is how people make conversation when they’re at a bar with the person they’ll like to strangle least. Second least.” She tilts her head at him. “Were you raised in a barn?”

He leans back. “It was about the Romanov princess, Anastasia. She was killed with her family in Yekaterinburg.” The ice cubes clink in his glass. “Shot in the back of the head. Bodies in a heap in the basement.”

“A one-act opera, then.”

“Some people think she survived. In the twenties, and the thirties—some people say she had fled to Germany, to Spain, to America. Some say she came to Paris.” The smoke curls lazily between them. She feels, strangely, as if she is beyond moving. “She’s almost certainly buried in a shallow grave with her family, but this made the better story _. Anastasiya Bessmertny_.”

His mouth curls strangely around the words, around the thick rolling syllables. She watches him smile, take a puff, and look down at her with those Mosin-Nagant eyes. With difficulty, she unsticks her tongue from the roof of her mouth. Her voice is thick. “Was that the name? Of the opera?”

“That’s the name.” He takes the cigarette out of his mouth, and offers it to her. She puts her lips where his lips had been; a kiss in remove. She feels cold. She is surrounded on all sides by the pulsating heat of writhing flesh, but she feels suddenly, inexplicably cold.

He watches her inhale. He watches her exhale. He takes the cigarette out of her mouth with his left hand, and his thumb is cold when it brushes, briefly, against her bottom lip. “Anastasia the Deathless.”

 

 

*

 

 

The communist’s daughter is coming to three shows in total.

One of the Company’s chief patrons, Bullion says, is close with a delegate of the National Assembly. At a private dinner, Mehdi had said—“‘grudgingly’, I was told,” Bullion laughs—that his daughter had enjoyed the show very much, and would like to see it again.

“Which is why, Isabelle, my darling,” he says, taking her small, doll-like face in hand, “you must take care to multiply your luminescence.”

“Creep.” Nadine says, after practice, and Isabelle laughs.

“He wants me to meet her again, next time.” Isabelle says, running a cotton bud under her eyes. There are dark circles underneath, hidden carefully behind the thick stage makeup, and then on top, the embroidered white mask. “She likes me, apparently, but I don’t know what he wants me to say to her. I’m no good with children.”

“Compliment her on her dress, and move on. Tada, come back in two years and maybe they’ll have a spot for you in the Company, if your father allows it.” Nadine picks at a scab on her knee. “He won’t. Let her down easy.”

“To have her father disapprove.” Isabelle sighs. “Claude says that Mehdi himself might come to a show.”

She stops picking at her scab. “Did he? When was this?”

“Last night. When—” Isabelle blushes. “He says it would be a great coup, good for the newspapers. It may be An Event.”

Nadine can hear the capitalization in her tone. “Huh.” She returns to picking at her scab. “Truth be told, I didn’t even know who Mehdi was before Bullion started jerking himself off over this.”

“Nadine!” Isabelle gasps. “That is—”

“What? Haven’t done that yet? I’d have thought—”

“That is _not_.” Isabelle says. Her pale cheeks are cherry blossom pink. “That is not what Claude and I—I’m not talking about this with you.” And then: “Claude is not— _jerking himself off_ over this. Mehdi’s a very important man. It looks very good for the Company.”

“Oh?”

“Very important, for your information. He’s been invited to speak all over the world. He’s a very—very brave man.”

“Speak on what?” The scab comes off. Underneath, the skin is pink and raw.

“The Revolution. He’s a representative of the Revolution.” Isabelle has taken off the heavy white powder, and now her face, when she turns towards Nadine, is pale and imperfect, ethereal like a war time picture of some soldier’s nurse. She and Michel, Nadine thinks, could make a very fitting picture. “He is working to erase inequality in all its forms, in Cuba and in South Africa. I admire him very much.”

Nadine tilts her head. “I didn’t know you had communist leanings.”

Isabelle’s lips thin. “It isn’t communist to think that people should be allowed to live, no matter where they are.”

“But he _is_ a communist.”

Isabelle looks at her strangely. “I thought you didn’t know who he was.”

Nadine considers the raw skin, exposed, on the side of her knee, near the crease between calf and thigh. She must have scraped it somewhere. Underneath, she imagines the layers of skin, the flexing muscle, the curving femoral artery—

“I don’t.” She says.

She hadn’t known who he was, hadn’t heard his name at all before Claude Bullion started jerking himself off over what a tainted, scandalous honour it was, to have a communist’s daughter in the Palais Garnier not just once, not just twice, but three times. She had no idea who he was. She has no idea who he is.

She has no idea who he is. Mehdi Barka; Moroccan, radical left-wing activist, anti-Apartheid, secretary of the Tri-Continental Symposium, political exile, anti-military insurgent. Forty five years old, a hundred and seventy five pounds, five feet eleven inches, permanent tear in the right rectus femoris—she has no idea who he is, no idea at all. No goddamned idea who—

“Nadine?” Isabelle’s face is suddenly very close. Close enough that she feels momentarily claustrophobic. Isabelle’s large blue eyes overlap with the closeness. “Are you alright? You’ve gone white—”

Her head swims. She squeezes her eyes shut, and closes her fingers with their ragged nails tightly around Isabelle’s wiry bicep, hard under the deceptively soft skin. She feels, rather than hears Isabelle’s sharp intake of breath. “Just—” She bites out. “Let me. Have a minute.”

Isabelle’s hand smooths over the crown of her head, butterfly soft. “I know you’re stressed. I can talk to Claude, get you a few days off.”

“It’s the middle of the season. I can’t take any time off.”

Isabelle’s thin fingers work thoughtfully through the hair at her nape. Nadine’s eyes flutter, her breath steadying. “You’re no good to any of us if you collapse in the middle of the season.”

You’re no good to any of us if you collapse in the middle of the season. You’re no good to any of us if you collapse. You’re no good to us—

With an effort, she forces her eyes open, so that she is staring back into Isabelle’s guileless blue ones. They are cornflower blue, Vermeer blue. Nadine feels bad for what she is about to do next.

For the first time, because she is close enough, or perhaps because she is no longer blind, she sees how Isabelle sees her. She watches Isabelle watch her.

Nadine leans forward.

Isabelle makes a small noise at the back of her throat, and her fingers tighten at the nape of Nadine’s neck. Those eyes slip closed. The skin of Isabelle’s throat, Nadine finds, is softer than her shoulder. She brushes her thumb across that pulse point, feeling the blood beat quicker beneath, feeling the mouth beneath hers soften.

Skin. Muscle. Bone.

Nadine pulls back a little, just far enough that only their foreheads are touching. She feels Isabelle’s breath against her mouth, cool where it was warm. “How long,” she asks, pausing to catch a breath she doesn’t need, “have you wanted this?”

Isabelle shakes her head a little, eyes still closed. Nadine looks up. Pale red-brown freckles dot the bridge of Isabelle’s nose. In the dressing room mirrors behind them, she watches Isabelle’s pale bare shoulders heave with the effort of the words. “A while.”

Nadine watches the reflection of herself smile. Bent together like this, the same light shines down on their heads. She has never noticed how similar their hair looks in the right light—auburn of the same family. From a distance, she thinks, they could be twins.

Nadine is wearing a shawl. She lets it slip.

 

 

Here is something she has never realized: how spacious her apartment seems until there is someone else in it.

She hadn't turned the lights on. In the dark, he sits on her bed, his shoulders hunched under the wool of his coat. There is a hangnail on his thumb, the nails of the fingers of his right hand uneven, the skin dry with cold. His left hand looks oddly plastic, like he had taken after his master and attended regular manicures.

The lines of his mouth are drawn and tight. "Have you ever been with a girl?"

 

 

Isabelle falls asleep on the couch in the dressing room. Nadine gets up.

 

 

She would give a limb to hear that dispassionate boredom again, to hear anything even vaguely resembling an emotion. She doesn't remember how she got here, doesn't remember the trip from the bar to the stifling warmth of her apartment. Strange shadows flicker across the floor, and her breath comes shallowly.

He doesn't look away from the door.

"Have you ever been with a girl?" He doesn't blink. His shoulders are tense, his fingers clutched tightly together; a feral dog crouched low in a corner of a cage, waiting for a beating. He'd feel better, she thinks, after a beating. They both would. "Have you ever been with a girl?"

 

 

Nadine gets up. Nadine stands, and dresses, and walks out of Isabelle's dressing room, and then out of the studio, and down the street. Nadine walks the twenty minutes to her street, enters the building without saying hello to the doorman, and rides the ten floors up to her flat.

Very carefully, she sets down the envelope she has been carrying for the walk. She takes off her thick sweater.

The skin of her upper arm feels clammy to the touch. Working her fingers under the strap of her brassiere, she skims the skin until she feels the edge of the film, and then she begins to peel.

It comes off transparent, clinging as it goes—a layer of skin, for all intents and purposes. She holds it up to her window, and the late afternoon Parisian light comes through in pinks and golds.

On it: the lines of a woman's palm, a smattering of fingerprints preserved by amino acids, lipid, and salt. She folds the film, and opens the flaps of the envelope. She places it in carefully with the two strands of curling, auburn hair.

She runs a bath. She doesn't look in the mirror as she undresses.

 

 

At the bar, he stands up straight for the first time that night, and says, "The secretary's daughter is coming to the show again in three days' time. With her father."

She still can't move. She is watching him, and she gives herself a moment to take it in, take it all in, how this cage has been built, brick by brick, around her. She can feel the bodies pushing up against her back as the partygoers jostle for a spot at the bar, their drink orders loud and insistent in her ears. No one, not a one, could overhear what he is saying, his voice low and words precise. He has no accent. She should have noticed. She should have known.

Her eyes drop to the manicured nails of his left hand, and then lower, to where the heels of his leather loafers are pressed together, toes apart. She feels like an idiot, all of a sudden. She can't believe that she thought he used to be a dancer.

"Mehdi has a late dinner with a potential ally in the National Assembly at Augustin's, after the show. He will leave during the last act." He says. "Before that, his daughter will take him to meet Isabelle during the second intermission."

The cigarette in his hand still has her lipstick ringed around the tip. He stubs it out. "We have ten minutes."

 

 

"Have you ever been with a girl?" He asks. His hands are shaking. His voice though, is as steady as if he is reading from a book. She wonders if in different circumstances, she could find it in herself to feel sorry for him.

She barely has enough room to feel sorry for herself.

"Have you ever been with a girl, agent?" He asks. For the first time that night, he looks at her. His eyes are very wide. He looks very young. He looks scared.

She doesn't answer. She doesn't trust herself to speak without her voice breaking. Her heartbeat spikes, and she finally admits to herself: _I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I don't want_ —

"Shall I show you how?"

To hoard yourself is selfish. To live only for yourself, with no greater purpose—one would have to be an animal. Every life to its purpose; every death, the same.

Fear has a unique ability to unite. Not for the first time, she doesn't understand why she doesn't stand, knock on her neighbour's door, and tell them that she is scared of the man in her apartment drawing her blinds with shaking hands. She doesn't understand why she doesn't walk down the street and to the police station, and tell them what is going to happen. She doesn't understand why she makes her way to her bed, heels together and toes apart, and sits.

This is what they must do. This is what must be done. Surely you must know, agent, that in a company of etoiles, the distinguishing factor between a prima ballerina and a prima ballerina assoluta is that one has no convictions against using one's body beyond the confines of one's art.

You must endure. You must weather through. You must not break.

You know this, agent. So does he.

 

 

*

 

 

On the night of October 29, 1968, Nadine stands beyond the stage lights of the Palais Garnier watching, with a thousand others, Isabelle complete the 32 _fouettés en tournant_ inOdile's coda. The air around her is buzzing with anticipation, the girls waiting in position to jump in at their cue. Bullion watches intently from the shadows, and she watches as Michel walks past him without sparing him a glance.

The fingers of his right hand are fire-brand hot through her bodice, and he doesn't seem to notice how all the girls turn to stare. She feels him next to her like a bow drawn tight before the release, and feels her spine hardening, her entire body curving forward. Muscle memory.

With the first trumpet call, he lowers his head until his mouth is next to her ear, and says—

 

 

Activation is a twofold process.

First, you require a word. A word not often uttered; a word that would, in casual conversation, prompt the other to ask 'what does that mean?' A word that will make you sit up, and listen, even if you had not been programmed to do so.

Second, you need a piece of music.

A single strain will not suffice. The elementary programmer can make two or three notes played in succession significant to the subject even with the primitive tactic of carrot and stick—for those dabbling in the higher functions of the human brain, something more difficult is required. Something less accidental. A glissando, an arpeggio, a sonata, a coda. Use of either part of the activation alone renders incomplete results, research has found, but what results they render are not insignificant. Under the direction of either music or word, the subject can undertake simple acts requiring minimal skill. A single word said without the right music or the right music played, over and over in an opera house is enough to maintain docility in the subject.

Within the philosophy that one agent in the right place, at the right time, with the right skills could be more effective than an army, it is of course the aspect of timing that is most important. This is what music teaches us: the right cartridge fired from the right vantage point requires a precision of rhythm, without which all else is forfeit. It is the keystone of the matter. You have to feel it in your bones, beating along your nerves; your body has to sing. It is always, always, all about the timing.

 

 

The crescendo rises, and the Asset says, " _Bessmertny_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, that was a long as hell wait. Sorry about that. Anyway. Just a few notes:
> 
> \- The Conservatoire refers to an academy of dance and music in Paris.  
> \- 'Two versions of Rothbart' is drawn from the 2000 production of Swan Lake by the American Ballet Theatre, which had Rothbart as a handsome duke who transforms into a monster, a la Odette/Odile.  
> \- Mehdi Barka is based on Ben Barka, a real life Moroccan anti-establishment politician who, after being exiled from Morocco, was hosted by various figures such as Che Guevara not only in South America, but also in Africa and Europe for his anti-colonial philosophy. He disappeared in Paris in 1965, weeks before he was set to host and speak at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana on anti-globalization, anti-capitalism, and anti-imperialism in Asia, Africa, and South America. As of 2009, the investigations of his death has yet to find the perpetrator. Speculation points to the CIA, Mossad, and the French Intelligence.  
> \- 'Anastasia came to Paris' is ripped shamelessly from the animated movie. However, for a brief time in the twenties and thirties, a woman called Anna Anderson did claim to be the long-lost princess and gained considerable support and considerable notoriety. At one point, Sergei Rachmaninoff (because I'm WEAK and couldn't resist this parallel) paid for her to stay in Long Island.  
> \- There are two unfortunate puns in this piece about two last names in particular. I'm sorry.


End file.
